


Memories Without Homes

by dimeliora



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Incest, M/M, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 21:11:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7480191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimeliora/pseuds/dimeliora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is worried about Sam. His brother has become obsessed with the disappearance of a little boy in Oklahoma. The deeper Sam delves into the missing Vincent Holley, the more Dean feels that he's losing his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The World Is Full of Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> I have several people to thank, as always, but first I'd like to say that I set this in a real town. I typically don't do that, and I'm not sure what inspired me to do it this time, but I would like to clarify that I am sure the people of Okeene and Isabella Oklahoma are lovely individuals and not like the characters in this story at all. I hope I don't offend anyone from that area, and if you do happen to live there or have visited feel free to tell me what I got wrong. :)
> 
>  
> 
> So a HUGE thanks to Sammichgirl as always for betaing this for me. It's not an easy job, and the number of times she has to change Same to Sam is always embarrassing. I love you woman.
> 
> A thanks to Clex Monster ( who helped me hash some of this out when it was just forming in my brain, and who created art for it because she likes to suffer. (She does, I totally asked her.) Love you!
> 
> To Andy, merakieross, I cannot say thanks enough for sitting through me complaining about this, for giving advice and counsel, and most importantly for shaping the plot by responding to me being stuck with "Light it on fire." Which I then took literarily literal. XD I love you Andy, and thank you for all your help.
> 
> Lastly but not lastly thank you to everyone who reads this. Because it's made to be loved. Or hated really as long as it causes some lasting damage on you. Where's a devil emoji when you need it??

_“Do you know what Ghosts are? They’re sad, evicted things. Memories without homes.”-Paul Prospero The Vanishing of Ethan Carter_  
_The world is full of heroes._

 

 

 

 

_Maybe not Batman or Superman heroes, but they are heroes. They don’t have capes or powers most of the time, they don’t have long funny names that are hard to pronounce and worse to try to spell, and they aren’t taught about in Mrs. Sowell’s eighth grade English class._

_But they’re heroes._

_And just like the heroes of legends of old they save the innocent and the weak. They never stop fighting, even when it’s hard or it hurts, and they’re not afraid of anything._

_The world is full of heroes._

_Some of those heroes fight fires, some of them fight wars, and some, a very very few, fight ghosts and monsters._

_Of those the greatest are the hunters, and of the hunters the greatest are the Winchesters._

_Sam and Dean Winchester may never be in a history book, and Shakespeare won’t write a long play about them, but they’ve saved a ton of people and they’re super cool. Dean, the oldest brother, wears a leather jacket and drives the world’s best car. Her name is Baby, and she is a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, and he got her from his dad. Dean thinks that killing monsters is the second most important thing in the world after his brother Sam._

_The youngest brother is Sam, and he’s the greatest hero in the world. Sam tried to leave the hunter life, but when things got bad he took up his gun again and went back into danger to save people. He sacrificed everything he had made for himself so that innocent people wouldn’t be hurt, and so that his older brother would be safe._

_But Sam and Dean are about to face their greatest mystery yet. Soon they will step into the town of Isabella, Oklahoma, and what they’ll find there will test their strength, their smarts, and their love._

_The world is full of heroes._

 

Dean walks out of the bathroom to find Sam sitting in front of the laptop, a pen dangling from his lips like a forgotten cigarette.

His little brother has always had issues with this. Getting so wrapped up in the information that he forgets the world around him. One time Dean came back from a hunt to find that Sam was still sitting beside the sandwich he’d made for the kid two days before. How Sam didn’t feel that hunger was still a question that plagued Dean.

Any way he looked at it though; Sam had his thing and that was figuring shit out. Dean liked that aspect of Sam. It made his brother a little quieter, a little more focused, and a lot less like Dean. The world didn’t need extra Deans.

Dean wasn’t going to bend down and check out the screen. Last time he did that Sam almost broke his nose with that thick skull of his. Instead he dropped into the seat across from Sam and kicked his feet up on the table with a loud clatter. Sam snapped out of his haze pretty quickly.

“Why do you always do that? We eat off of this. Look at your boots.”

He couldn’t stop the grin. Sam was always fun to annoy.

“Calm down Samantha, we’re checking out tomorrow anyway. Now. What are you staring at? Finally watched that hentai I bookmarked for you?”

Sam’s eyes narrow and he shuts the laptop.

“No. I’ve got a case. Isabella, Oklahoma. A little boy named Vincent Holley went missing.”

Dean waits but nothing else comes. Sam is just looking at him, expectantly, and Dean doesn’t know what to do.

“And then?”

It’s a reasonable question. A kid going missing is terrible, sure, and Dean wishes it didn’t happen so much. But what makes a case something they go after is more than just one missing kid. If they spent their time chasing every missing person’s case along with the locals and the feds every monster in America could go on a binge and get away with it.

Some things have to be left to the proper authorities.

Sam’s face shifts slow and sure. It goes from confused to disbelieving, and then it settles into a bitch face that Dean can’t quite decipher. Which is new.

“And _then what_? The kid disappeared out of thin air. That’s our domain Dean.”

“What do you mean thin air?” He leans forward, feet clattering to the ground and starting to warm up to whatever it is that Sam’s found.

“Thin air. One minute he was in the car with his mother, and the next he was gone.”

“Who’s to say the mom isn’t lying? Like that chick in Florida or the one in South Carolina. She just got tired of being a mom and did something to him, then made up a story to cover it up?”

Dean expects a long and logical tirade, because Sam is Sam and he can’t stop himself from doing things like that. Instead he gets rage. Sam slams his fist down on the table, dangerously close to cracking the laptop.

“For once would you take my judgment into account? Just _once_ would you listen to me instead of playing the ‘I know better’ older brother card? I’m telling you that this is our kind of case. That I’ve looked over all the relevant data and come to a conclusion that is solid! This kid disappeared into thin air and I _promise_ you he won’t be the first. If we don’t go now then whoever goes next is on _us_.”

Sam’s nostrils are flaring, eyes wide and bright with rage and desperation, and Dean takes a deep breath and composes his response before he says it. Because Sam has never done that. Not once. Sam has never played on Dean’s personal guilt. It’s always been “You can’t save them all.” Now this. Something is going on and Dean just needs to figure it out for Sam and get it fixed before his little brother goes too far into it.

Mentally he checks off all the cities they’ve ever been to in case this is a place Sam remembers but Dean doesn’t. As far as he can tell it isn’t, so Sam didn’t go there and make a personal connection with anyone who would be involved in this. Someone he knew at Stanford maybe? Someone that moved back home.

Whatever it is this is personal and Sam is not sharing why. Which means Dean needs to know.

“Ok. You’re right. Pack up and let’s get on the road. We’re not that far from there anyway right?”

Sam’s mouth loses traction for a second, still ready for a fight and unable to comprehend that Sam’s brain is telling it the fight is over. Finally his little brother packs up his laptop without a word and starts throwing things into his bag.

And Dean lets him. Sam won’t come clean right now. But he will eventually.

 

They pull into Okeene, Oklahoma at two AM. Dean picks the first motel he sees, not surprisingly named after the city itself, and stops Baby. It’s conveniently located close to the only grocery store, and the night clerk is sleeping in his chair with the TV blaring cartoons. Dean taps the bell and watches the man crash out of his chair trying to get up.

“What the hell did you do that for?”

Dean looks over his shoulder at the parked Impala. Sam is asleep in the passenger seat, slumped down low enough that only the mop of his hair and a peek of his forehead are visible over the dash.

“Need a room for a couple nights. Two queens if you got them.”

The night clerk, Damon according to his nametag, raises an eyebrow and pulls himself upright.

“Best I can do is two twins. We ain’t really set up for much more than that. You paying in cash or card?”

Dean digs in his wallet and pulls out the card. The place is less than forty a night, but he can see the rig they have on the counter and it’s way too old to out them before they solve the case and disappear themselves.

“Four nights. If it goes longer we’ll just extend from there ok?”

“Sounds good to me. We’re not drowning in reservations.”

Damon runs the card and then hands it back, rubbing his eyes before he digs a key out from under the desk and puts it on the counter with the receipt.

“Check out is at eleven AM your last day. If you need to extend just let me know at least an hour before. My sister does the maid service so she needs warning. If you don’t want the light turn just put the do not disturb sign out and she won’t go in.”

“Family business huh?” Dean’s already checked out, brain racing ahead to how to get Sam out of the car peacefully and clicking over the map he studied to see where they’re best served to get food.

“Nah. It’s her second job. She’s also a candy striper at the hospital.”

Dean turns at that, looking out at the road and the huge stretch of field beyond it, then turning back to Damon.

“You got a hospital around here?”

It could be considered insulting but Damon laughs and points to his left.

“Down on F Street. It’s easy to miss. Looks like an old strip mall, but we got two really good docs and at least four nurses now. They mostly just handle the typical shit you see with farmers and mill workers. But there’s unincorporated townships round here and we service them too.”

He files the credit card back into its slot in his wallet and picks up the key and the receipt.

“Isabella one of those?”

There’s an odd look that passes over Damon’s face, something dreamy and scared all at once. He nods and then pulls out a ledger and starts writing in it.

“What’s that look for? It some kind of _Children of the Corn_ town?”

A burst of nervous laughter escapes Damon as he finishes scribbling and shuts the ledger quickly.

“I think more people lived in the movie town. Nah man, it’s just…I grew up there so I know everybody that lives there. I’m not saying Okeene’s a bustling metropolis or nothing, but we got about ten or fifteen times the number of people. Isabella has a church and a post office, and then a house every two or three miles. It’s just one of those places.”

Dean leans in. He's always been good at this. Catching the moment when someone inadvertently starts telling him pertinent information without knowing they’re being questioned. Helping that along. He could pull a badge, but he gets the sense that if he did Damon would shut down.

“One of what places?”

Damon’s eyes dart to the window, to the TV screen, and then back to Dean.

“One of _those_ places. Where the lights are never quite bright enough at night. Where you ain’t really sure if the scratch at the door was a raccoon but you’ll laugh and say it was and stay the hell inside. Everybody knows each other but that don’t mean they’re friends. And with what happened to Vincent… It’s just an odd little town. I was gladder than hell when we moved.”

Sam is going to be so fucking smug.

Dean jingles the key and makes sure he has eye contact. He’ll come back for more later.

“Glad we stopped here then.”

 

 

Sam is muttering in his sleep. Something Dean can’t make out, but it doesn’t have a tone that suggests Dean needs to perk his ears up and get closer.

He moves the car down to the end of the line of rooms and then unpacks Baby first before he links his arms around Sam and pulls him out of the passenger seat. Sam is gone, lax and heavy in Dean’s grip, and he half drags his brother to the room before propping him up long enough to get the door open again and get Sam inside.

The room is small, plain, but the whole place looks clean and there’s no lingering smells that make Dean wish they’d just decided to sleep in the Impala for their stay.

Dean gets Sam on the bed furthest from the door and then takes his brother’s shoes off. Sam grumbles something and jerks, and Dean barely misses a foot to the nose. He stands and leans, unbuttoning Sam’s pants and unzipping them before sliding them down. It’s something he’s done a million times, with Sam both very much awake and Sam dead asleep like this, and the whole thing goes routinely until Dean pulls Sam up to get his shirt off.

He’s sliding his hands under the hem, getting just a tiny bit of a feel, when Sam’s arm wraps around him like a band of steel and pulls him in close. Sam’s breath smells bad. Dean can say without exaggerating that it’s like the grave, and Sam’s skin where Dean is touching him is ice cold. He shudders and tries to pull loose but Sam has a death grip on him.

All the panic bells are ringing in Dean’s head when his brother speaks. The voice that comes out of him is raspy and high at the same time, not like Sam at all. It sounds like a child speaking through a horror movie filter.

_“Please help I’m stuck.”_

Dean can’t turn his head to look at Sam. He’s locked in position, his heart crashing against his ribs. Sam is getting colder by the second.

_“Please. Erin please. Help me.”_

And then Sam deflates, breath flying out of him and past Dean in a cold rush, and his brother is limp and lax again. Dean isn’t holding onto him anymore, so Sam flops away from him onto the bed. His brother’s lips are gray, his skin pale, and Dean takes his own deep breath before he grabs Sam’s shoulders and shakes.

“Sammy! Sammy! Wake the fuck up!”

His brother’s eyes flutter, and then Sam is looking at him. Looking at him like _Dean_ is the one that just scared the shit out of someone.

“What?”

“What do you mean what? What the fuck was that?”

Sam looks around the room, eyes blearily taking everything in, and then he focuses on Dean.

“I was sleeping Dean.”

“You were-“ What, talking? Channeling the voice of someone else? What the fuck is he supposed to say here?

Sam is unimpressed with Dean’s inability to word his concerns.

“Dean. I’m going back to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

And with that Sam is rolling under the covers. Sam is going back to sleep. Dean is staring at the slowly rising and falling lump that is his brother. And the smell of death lingers in the room.

Whatever is up with Sam it is infinitely worse than Dean first guessed.

 

 

Dean sits up all night. The room is quiet enough. The road outside isn’t traveled enough for there to be a lot of traffic noise, and there’s no clanking ice machine nearby or grunting couple one room over. Instead Dean just listens to the low hum of the heater and the sound of Sam’s breath moving in and out of him.

He watches the sun climb the wall across from his bed, listens to the birds wake up, and then gets out of bed and walks to the lobby. Damon is awake this time, drinking coffee and reading the paper. Dean looks around and sees the big carafe before Damon notices him and wordlessly points it out. He pours himself a cup and takes the high chair that sits in front of the counter.

“You look like you got no sleep at all. Something wrong with the room?”

Dean drinks and is surprised to find that the coffee is good.

“Nah. Very nice room. Just had some stuff to review. How much longer do they make you sit up here?”

Damon chuckles and turns the page, his eyes flitting from the paper briefly to Dean. It’s all regional stuff, nothing terribly interesting, and Dean is able to ignore it instead of scanning.

“Nobody makes me do anything. I own this place. Me and my sister Erin.”

Cold slides down his spine, locks into place at the base and reminds him that he’s got a huge problem behind him sleeping in a run-down Oklahoma motel.

“Erin?”

And just like magic a girl appears in the doorway behind Damon. She’s pretty, young, and her hair is collected in two braids like a little girl highlighting her youth. Freckles are sprinkled across her nose and her eyes are a bright and lovely blue.

“You called?”

Damon looks over his shoulder at his sister and his face splits into a huge grin. Dean knows that smile. He can see the similarities between them. Damon doesn’t have the freckles, and his hair is darker, but they’ve got the same eyes and chin. The same bowed mouth.

“Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m your new temporary resident.”

Erin’s smile is lovely as she steps up behind her brother and leans on the counter.

“Nice to meet you too. I’m your maid and hospitality coordinator. Ask me anything about this town, I can lead you to it.”

Damon rolls his eyes, affection oozing out of him, and Dean can’t help but laugh even though everything else is such a catastrophic pile of shit.

Even though this girl is sporting the name Sam brought of out of the ether last night, it’s not a coincidence. Dean’s gut knows it.

“Where’s the best food?”

“Rosa’s is good in the morning, but T-Mac’s is where you want to go for dinner or lunch. And adventure.”

Dean feels his eyebrow shoot up, the mask slipping on easily to cover his discomfort.

“Adventure?”

“Aw yeah. They serve rattlesnake. Bet you never ate that before.”

“You’d win that bet. I’ve never tried rattlesnake. Is it any good?”

Erin giggles and Damon’s smile gets a little brighter. A proud big brother.

“She doesn’t know. She’s never tried it either. Too much of a chicken.”

Erin shoots her brother an ugly look, her elbow slamming into his side, and that’s when Dean sees that two of the fingers on her left hand are shorter than they should be. There’s scarring all down the back of it that probably goes on under the sleeve of her cover up sweater.

“Well I’ll give it a go and let you know how it is. My stomach is lined with lead.”

Erin smiles at that, gives her brother one more elbow, and then bounces out of the room.

“Think I’ll head back and wake my partner up.”

Damon tilts his head at that, but there’s no judgement in it. Dean decides to squash the automatic assumption quickly.

“We’re FBI agents. Here to look into the disappearance.”

The look on Damon’s face shifts rapidly. From questioning to horror. And then he reaches out and grabs Dean’s wrist, and Dean feels that same dread he had with Sam. He waits for the voice, the smell of the grave, but he doesn’t get it.

“Don’t. Some things just shouldn’t be looked into. Don’t.”

And then Erin bursts back in and Damon is recoiling from him and holding his hands up like he’s surrendering. Erin gives them an odd look before addressing her brother.

“The vacuum cleaner is broken again. Come on.”

And Damon takes off behind her like a shot leaving Dean with a cup of coffee and a terrible taste in his mouth.

 

 

Sam’s awake when Dean comes back into the motel room. He’s staring at his computer screen with that blank look again. Dean doesn’t know if he should try to get Sam’s attention or just leave him alone while he packs everything up so they can leave.

And then Sam shakes himself, closes the laptop, and looks at Dean’s coffee cup.

“You bring any for me?”

Dean looks down, back up, and Sam rolls his eyes and snorts.

“Jerk. We’ll get some on the way.”

Dean looks around the room and then back at his brother, who’s fastening a button-up shirt like everything is totally normal.

“Way to what?”

Sam looks up from his buttons, eyes wide with surprise.

“Isabella. We’re talking to the mother first. Find out what Mrs. Holley didn’t tell the police.”

“Sammy. She told them her kid disappeared into thin air. She’s obviously not too worried about sounding weird. What exactly do you think she’d be hiding?”

His brother collects his suit jacket, his wallet, and then not too gently shoulders Dean on his way out the door.

“Hurry up.”

And Dean does. He drops the empty cup in the trash and gets dressed before Sam can lift into the air and float off out of reach.

 

Mrs. Holley lives in a tiny trailer home on the edge of what could graciously be called town. The streets here are empty even though it’s the middle of a Saturday, and Dean scans his eyes up and down them before turning back to the door.

Sam stands with his foot jiggling, eyes locked on the door, and Dean reaches out without thought and taps his brother’s thigh so that the twitching stops. This is usually Sam’s move.

When the woman opens the door Dean jumps at the loud screech it makes. Mrs. Holley is a surprise too. Grief has aged her ten years at least, because this is a woman much older than he pictured. That or she waited very late in life to have an eight year old.

“Whatta ya want?”

Her face is wrinkled, dark shadows under both her eyes, and she squints in the sunlight like she’s not used to seeing it. Sam takes point while Dean stares.

“Mrs. Holley? I’m Agent Young and this is my partner Agent Vedder. We had a few questions about Vincent?”

The squint turns dangerous, mouth curling down into a scowl, and Dean almost pulls Sam back out of some half-buried instinct before the woman’s face smooths out and she steps back to let them in. Dean can’t shake the apprehension, steps in on high alert with his hand lingering near his gun.

Sam, for his part, seems to accept all of this as perfectly normal.

“Whatta ya gotta ask me? I answered all them questions.”

Sam points to the couch and she nods, but Dean doesn’t want to sit down. He doesn’t want to give this woman tactical advantage. It’s like watching a slow motion car wreck. Dean can see everything going wrong, but he can’t understand how to stop it or react right.

And then his brother is sitting, and giving him a look, but Dean stays on his feet. Fight or flight has always been his friend.

“I know ma’am. We just have a few extras. Please have a seat.”

She does. Eyes fixed on Sam like Dean isn’t even really there anymore. Which kind of works for him.

“Well ask ‘em. I got stuff to do.”

“Can you go over that day in detail again? I know that you already did it a few times before, but once more for my partner and I. Sometimes with a little time in between the initial event and the reporting you’ve had the ability to process what happened better.”

There’s a long pause and then the woman pulls herself upright a little more and clears her throat. Dean doesn’t lower his guard.

“We was riding in the car to the school. He had to be there for a recital. He was arguing with me about being late. Like he always did. And then he stopped arguing. I turned to see why and he was gone. End of story.”

Dean clears his throat and the woman jerks, eyes landing on him like he snuck in.

“What instrument did he play?”

Sam’s pulled out a little notebook that Dean hasn’t seen in an age. He watches his brother busily scribble as the woman’s eyes cast about unsure over the room.

What kind of a mother doesn’t know what instrument her kid plays? Didn’t she have to buy it for him? Listen to him practicing?

“Flute.”

Sam doesn’t look up from his notes when he talks. Apparently they’re going to attack her from both sides and see who makes her crack first. Keep her talking until she runs out of lies. Dean can play that.

“How late were you?”

“Uh. Fifteen minutes or so? We were-“

“Why were you late?” Dean shifts his weight, watches her eyes locking onto Sam’s scribbling pen.

“I hadda appointment that ran over.”

Sam glances Dean’s way, and Dean nods.

“What kind of appointment?”

She swallows at that, glaring at Sam without trying to hide or control it.

“A private one. Don’t think I gotta tell you.”

Dean looks around the room. Alcohol bottles in the trash, crusted plates and cups overflowing in the sink, and burn marks on the carpet. There’s a good chance this woman was too plastered to see her son simply get out of the car and walk as far from her shit as he could get.

Sam nods and then looks over to Dean. Dean takes over as smoothly as he can.

“Was Vincent in any trouble? You said he was big on fighting with you right? Was he that way with all authority?”

Her eyes fly down to her hands, and then back up to Dean.

“Vince fought with me. He didn’t fight back with anybody else. He was a good boy.”

Dean’s judgement call on her wavers, but Sam leans in like he smells blood.

“You said fight back. So someone fought with Vincent? Had a grudge?”

Her eyes well up for a second, and Dean watches her wipe them and the expression off so she can go back to being tough and burnt out.

“Vince was different. This ain’t the place for that.”

“Can you give us names Mrs. Holley? Anyone that might have wanted to hurt Vince?”

She looks at Dean then, and he sees everything he needs to know. Sam was right. This woman didn’t toss her kid and try to cover it up. She’s not reacting right, not grieving or in shock the way he might expect someone who lost their child so recently and suddenly, but she’s not happy about what’s happening.

“In his room there’s a yearbook. Open it up and practically any name you see is someone that’d hurt my boy.”

Dean locks eyes with Sam, and then he puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes once.

“Thank you Mrs. Holley. We’ll find your son.”

She looks at her hands strangely, fingers locked together and apparently puzzling to her.

“You didn’t ask ‘bout his daddy. All the other cops did.”

Sam’s mouth thins into a line, and he stands up and looks around the mobile home before he steps past Dean and disappears into the first room on the left through the hall. Leaves Dean to deal with this question alone, a huge dick move considering Sam’s done all the research for this case.

“Well, ma’am, should we have?”

Her mouth curls in distaste, something old and sour building up, and she shakes her head. There’s gratitude there when Dean pushes it no further.

So he follows Sam through the door into a buttonhole bedroom with just enough space for two beat up and mismatched dressers and a mattress on the floor. The walls are covered in posters, cut-outs from magazines of places and artwork, and surprisingly good sketches.

There’s an instrument case on top of one of the dressers, and Dean instantly notices how much cleaner this room is than all the others. Vincent didn’t pick up his mom’s sanitation habits.

“Sammy. What was-”

Dean’s voice stops when Sam pulls open a dresser drawer seemingly at random and Dean sees a hoard of books. They’re neatly stacked, carefully organized, and Dean roams the piles with his eyes categorizing each one by one. The first is textbooks piled on top of two slim yearbooks. Dean reaches past Sam to pluck the two yearbooks up to take back to the motel with them.

The next stack is fiction novels, many of them centered around spooky tales and mysteries, and Dean cocks an eyebrow at that but Sam isn’t paying attention. His brother’s fingers dip into the deep drawer and drag over the empty space in the center before scooping up a pile of composition notebooks.

“These are awfully thin.” Sam’s mouth puckers thoughtfully when he says it, eyes locked on the spotted covers.

“Are they? I never thought those things were very thick in the first place.”

Sam tilts his head and opens the top book, and Dean can see all the torn out page ends left behind. His brother’s fingers dreamily drag over the ragged paper when he speaks.

“That’s because you always ripped out pages to make paper airplanes and write notes to girls.”

“ _I_ never wrote notes to girls. They wrote notes to me and I wrote responses on them. Totally different.”

Sam rolls his eyes, distracted, and then snaps the book shut and looks up.

“Do you smell something?”

And no, Dean doesn’t, but Sam is suddenly looking a little pale again.

“What do you smell Sammy?”

Suddenly Dean knows why this scares him so bad. This is too much like when Sam had those visions. The demon blood ones. And Dean hasn’t seen that in Sam in years. Hasn’t had to watch Sam tortured by it, and isn’t ready to see it again. All of that went away with Azazel. Dean won’t watch his brother suffer that way again.

But Sam knew then. Knew that he was having premonitions. And Sam would tell him right?

“Water. Stale water and stone. Don’t you smell that?”

Dean opens his mouth to respond and hears a scream from the living room. He trips over his own feet spinning to turn around and hits the doorframe, and Sam leaps past him through the narrow door and is gone. Dean is only seconds behind, one hand clutching the yearbooks and the other pulling his gun.

But there’s nothing there. The furniture and the bottles and the dishes are just where they left them, but Mrs. Holley is gone and all that is left is a piece of paper in the spot she was sitting. The front door is closed. The windows are closed.

And there was no screech.

Sam steps forward, shifting the composition notebooks in his hands so he can pick the note up. He reads over it, flips it to read the other side, and then holds it out to Dean with a puzzled look on his face that does not bode well for their case.

“I told you there’d be more disappearances.”

Dean feels like screaming.

 

 

_ The Sick Queen _

_The Queen is sick, and no one in the land can help her. She suffers at night from terrible dreams, ghosts following her every moment of the day. At first the Queen believed she could fix the problem herself. She spoke to the ghosts angrily, telling them that they were making her sick and slowly killing her. But the ghosts didn’t care._

_She cried and begged them to leave her. She told them she would deal with them in pieces if they would just leave her alone when she had to be with her son, the Prince, or when she was working in the kingdom. But the ghosts didn’t care._

_Eventually she went to her counselor and her doctor and spoke with them. But the wisest men in the land couldn’t help her either. They told her that she had brought the ghosts in by crying for the lost king. They told her that only she could make the ghosts leave if she really wanted it._

_They told her she didn’t really want it._

_The Queen got sicker and sicker, and no amount of love from the Prince could bring her back. The ghosts took her over, until one day she became one of them._

 

Dean stares at the hand-drawn picture on the back of the little story. A woman in a crown huddled under covers and surrounded by the classic Casper ghosts screaming at her through dark “O” mouths.

He flips the page back over to look at the story as well, but all he sees is the picture lingering on his retinas. It’s a crude likeness, but Dean sees it.

Mrs. Holley is the sick queen.

Sam’s staring at the page too, but his face isn’t what Dean is expecting. No, Sam doesn’t look thoughtful or considerate, frustrated, concerned. Nothing.

Sam looks like a robot analyzing a foreign object. Fumbling his way through a humans-only concept.

Dean snaps his fingers in front of his brother’s face and watches Sam rear back so hard the chair legs lift off the floor and Dean is forced to grab Sam before he topples all the way over.

“What the fuck is wrong with you Dean?”

“What the fuck is wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you! You’ve been staring at that thing all blank and shit for about an hour. Unless you’ve come up with something amazing I wanna know where your head’s at!”

Sam makes approximately six bitchfaces in about one minute before he settles his chair back and runs fingers through his unruly hair to knock it into place. Then he grabs up one of the composition notebooks, runs his fingers over the ragged edges again, and lines the page up with them.

It’s a perfect puzzle piece fit.

“Holy shit.”

Sam’s eyes are fixed on the page, but he swallows once before nodding at Dean.

“Yeah. Holy shit. So now we have more questions. Whatever took Vincent took those pages too, and now it has his mom.”

Dean blinks, once, twice, and then points to the notebook.

“Think it’s literal ghosts? Maybe the kid was seeing them and his mom wasn’t?”

Sam shakes his head once and releases the page. It lays flat inside the shell of the notebook, too innocent to be so utterly fucking dreadful.

“I think we need to find the rest of the pages. Maybe if we do that we can piece it together.”

Dean stands up, rubbing his head briefly and viciously to get the blood flowing to his brain, then sits back down closer to Sam.

“Sammy? You said you smelled water and rocks before Mrs. Holley screamed. What was that? You ever smelled that before?”

His brother looks sideways at him, too careful to be honest, and Dean feels that chill again. He and Sam lie to each other a fair amount, but Dean hasn’t seen that look in years.

Sammy’s secret sin.

“No. I’ve never smelled that before. But maybe it’s a clue. Time to start researching all the deaths that happened around here. I’ll do that, and you poke around and see who in that yearbook might be a more corporeal suspect.”

Dean hesitates. It’s not unusual for them to split up and work on different angles, but he’s not sure he’s comfortable with letting Sam out of his sight right now. His brother is acting weird, and Dean isn’t really sure that letting Sam go off on his own is a good idea.

But Dean also isn’t sure that confronting Sam on that will do any good. He remembers what it was like back when the visions started up bad enough that Dean could spot them. And the even more likely outcome is that Dean suggests Sam is having them again and his brother takes it as an accusation that he’s fallen off the wagon somehow.

Which Dean knows, without question, isn’t true. There isn’t any part of him that thinks Sam could be drinking blood again. Whatever is happening here it isn’t that.

“Ok. You hungry? I hear there’s good rattlesnake around here.”

Sam looks at the stack of notebooks and Dean knows he’s lost his brother’s attention already.

“Yeah. Why don’t you get it and bring it back? I’m gonna get started on these.”

Reluctantly Dean leaves Sam in the little motel room and heads out to get them food.


	2. Hello Kettle

Rattlesnake tastes like tough fish.

Dean instantly hates it. He hates it even more as he watches Sam enjoy his salad while he browses what’s left in the notebooks. The fries that came with it are perfect though and he destroys those before wiping greasy fingers on his pants and picking up one of the notebooks that Sam isn’t staring at.

It must be much older than the pictures that were displayed in the room, because the technique is clumsier and the pencil used isn’t made for sketching the way the kid is trying to.

The sketches are happier too. Animals and trees, a squirrel with a hideously rendered tail, a house with careful lines that make it three dimensional on the page.

Sometimes things are written on the pictures, not stories but dates or short little thoughts. It doesn’t take long to figure out that Vincent is creating a kind of scrapbook. There’s a picture of the elementary school that’s surprisingly well done and Dean runs his fingers over the thicker lines that create the gym. There’s a spot where the lead ripped through the paper, and it’s the only time Dean has seen Vincent get that heavy handed with his pencil.

A throat clearing breaks his concentration, and Dean looks up to see Sam staring at him oddly.

Hello Kettle.

“What?”

“I’m gonna take a shower and then get in bed. You staying up?”

Dean rubs his neck, considering his options. He shakes his head and closes the notebook, drops it next to the ones Sam has been studying, and then stands up and stretches.

“Nah. I’m gonna shower first and then hit the hay myself. We’ll come at it fresh in the morning.”

Sam rubs his face then, and Dean almost asks him. Almost crosses the line into dangerous territory.

And then turns instead and closes the bathroom door behind himself to shower and get away from the things he can’t risk himself saying.

 

 

In the morning Dean wakes up grateful for a long and quiet night of nothing. Sam slept peacefully, and that means Dean got a whole bunch of short naps interrupted only by his own internal Sam alarm system.

Now Sam is drinking coffee like he’s not the reason Dean slept sitting up and jerked awake every hour.

And Dean has to work hard not to resent his brother for that, because it’s not _technically_ Sam’s fault. But technicalities don’t ease a crick in the neck.

Sam lifts a questioning eyebrow at the obvious fatigue on Dean’s face and then reaches out and links fingers with him.

It honestly shocks the shit out of Dean.

They haven’t done that in a long time. After Hell, after the Cage, after the demon blood it just hasn’t come up. Not for a lack of want or need on Dean’s part, but a lack of ability to reach out for Sam. And Sam? Well Dean’s never been quite sure with Sam.

So many possibilities have occurred to him as to why Sam wouldn’t push for it like he did in the beginning that Dean had to give up the line of thought so that he didn’t tear himself completely apart.

And now, when Sam is being plagued by something Dean can’t identify, when the nightmares and the shadiness have returned, Sam is reaching out like they never stopped. Like no time has passed at all.

Dean can’t make himself pull his hand away. Instead he stares at the fingers linked with his.

“You ok? You’re acting weird.”

A harsh bark of laughter escapes him and with it Sam’s hand. Dean swallows hard and then looks up.

“Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking about all the weird shit you got us into.”

Sam swallows too, eyes locked on Dean’s face, and then his brother nods and slips out of the door. Dean follows him. Drives him over to the local library, a shop front squeezed in between a salon and an empty space that used to hold a business, and then drives on to the school one street down. Both the elementary and the high school are in the same building complex, and Dean wanders a little before he finds the right door to get to the office.

The woman manning the front desk has a name plate that announces she’s called Doris. Dean leans over the counter to get her attention and she jumps a bit and minimizes the game of Solitaire she was working on.

“How can I help you?”

She’s flustered, but Dean can understand that. He’s willing to bet the number of new people she sees is remarkably small. He slides his badge out on the desk in front of him and she glances down at it, eyes widening, before she looks back up to his face.

“Agent. How can I help you agent?”

Dean smiles, trying to break the tension that’s ratcheted up in her.

“I’m here looking into the disappearance of Vincent Holley. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions?”

Doris nods and then gestures to the seat next to her desk. Dean flops into it and puts the badge away.

“Did you know Vincent?”

Doris searches his face for a moment, and Dean isn’t sure what she’s looking for but he is sure that he’s not going to get by on his looks. He may have caught Doris off-guard, but she’s getting her feet under herself now.

“Yes. I know all the kids here. It’s a very small school.”

“Can you tell me a little about him?”

She licks her lips, eyes casting over the office and landing on a row of file cabinets before flitting back to Dean. He makes a mental note of it.

“Vincent was a good kid. Played flute in the band. Didn’t have many friends but he was always friendly. Troubled home life.”

It’s delivered tight, bullet points practically spoken, and Dean blinks and then leans in. Here is yet another adult that isn’t reacting the way Dean’s prepared for. He should probably stop preparing.

“But?”

Doris lifts an eyebrow, fingers tapping on her desk.

“But what?”

“There’s a but there. I can hear it.”

She gives a shaky smile before she looks past Dean, through the plate glass windows of the office and into the school. The lobby is empty, filled with banners for classes’ winter projects.

“But, Vincent was different, and in a place like this that’s not a great way to be. You know? He spent too much time alone, too much time reading and drawing, and a flute isn’t exactly what the kids around here consider a manly instrument. He was a small boy too. It was a recipe for disaster. The Okeene kids didn’t want to deal with him and the Isabella kids actively punished him for being himself. But I’ll give Vincent points for stubbornness, because that never once swayed him from being an individual.”

Dean’s reading between the lines, and he doesn’t like the story he’s seeing. It opens up doors that he hadn’t considered opening. A ghost of someone small-minded, judgmental, could carry that sort of bigotry beyond the grave. Vincent, a “sensitive boy”, and his alcoholic mother would have a lot of points against them.

But non-ghost options are there too. This is the sort of area that can easily inbreed hatred and intolerance. Small, enclosed communities with no real concern for their public image typically allow for shady things to happen to people that don’t fit in with the leadership. He adds the Isabella church to his list of places to stop before pulling out the newest yearbook and opening it to Vincent’s class.

“Can you tell me who was the most trouble for him? I promise, I won’t go busting kids’ heads.”

Doris smiles at that, honest and real, and then studies the pages. She points at three different boys and names each as her finger ticks off their smiling faces.

“Thomas, Matthew, and Brandon. Those are the three ringleaders. And this one, Chelsea, is Matthew’s girlfriend. If there’s trouble in the school then it’s usually one of those four kids.”

“And they’ve all had run-ins with Vincent?”

Doris nods, her face crinkled with thought, and Dean gives her a second before interrupting.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just. Nothing. You know that you can’t speak to them without their parents present right?”

Dean curses internally, missing Bobby and his ability to facilitate seemingly legal maneuvers for the five thousandth time that month.

“Yeah. I have yet to stop in with the locals and discuss it. Any questioning of minors will be done through them.”

Doris’s face relaxes at that and she pushes the yearbook back to Dean.

“Chelsea’s daddy is actually the sheriff, so you might run into some problems there. But I think you can put the pressure on, what with being a fed right?”

Dean nods, standing up and sweeping up the yearbook at the same time. He starts to turn and stops, eyes landing on a flyer for the J.V. Baseball team.

“Which of them had gym with him?”

A beat of silence and then Doris responds very carefully.

“Technically all of them, the school is small enough for that, but Vincent was excused permanently from gym. He couldn’t do the showers with the other boys.”

Dean turns at that, unsure of the next question even as it escapes his mouth.

“Was that his decision or someone else’s?”

A shadow crosses Doris’s face, anger long past.

“Someone else’s.”

Dean leaves on that.

 

He can’t go to the local cop shop without Sam, and Dean knows better than to show up before Sam texts him to come.

Instead he drives around aimlessly for a few minutes before he stops in front of the hospital and gets out.

The place is one level, looks like a department store without the display windows, and Dean considers it before adjusting his tie and stepping in. He’s not entirely sure why he’s here. The lobby is empty minus one nurse sitting behind the counter reading a book. Dean steps up to her and leans over, waiting for her to notice him before he speaks.

“Hi there. Agent Vedder. Is Erin around?”

It’s completely unplanned, not thought out on even the most basic level, but he knows the instant the nurse looks him up and down and gives a dirty grin that he’s made the right choice.

“Sure sugar. She’s down the hall there in the break room, putting together baskets. Say, is she in trouble?”

“No ma’am. I just wanted to stop in and follow up on a restaurant lead she gave me.”

The nurse’s grin spreads over her face, and she closes her book and leans in close.

“Can _I_ be in trouble agent?”

Dean laughs, gives her the smile he knows is just right, and then leans back.

“Not today sweetheart, but look me up when the case is finished.”

“You got it! Third door on the left.”

Dean heads towards the breakroom counting off doorways as he looks down the hall. Someone needs to call the maintenance guy because there’s a fluorescent patch flickering like a horror movie and casting the end of the hallway in creepy darkness. It’s too stereotypical to be real. He almost expects a monstrous killer to lumber out and solve the mystery for them, but instead a bored looking doctor strolls under the flickering light and steps into a patient’s room.

He turns into the breakroom to find Erin wielding scissors to curl ribbons, her face crumpled up in concentration.

“Stare any harder and they’ll burst into flames.”

She jumps, scissors slipping, and Dean manages to catch them right before they cut her. Erin blushes and lets go so he can gingerly take the blades and lay the scissors down on the table next to her. He takes the seat across and unbuttons his jacket.

“So this is what you do when you’re not at the motel?”

She looks around the room, and Dean can tell from her expression that it’s better in her eyes than he sees it. Something filled with promise.

“Yep. Or at school, but I have early dismissal this year. The joy of being a senior.”

Dean puts his finger idly in the looped handle of the scissors, spinning them once on the table as he collects words that won’t tip her off. Or freak her out.

“Sounds great. Know what you’re going to do when you get out?”

Erin smiles, big and bright, and Dean can tell she’s going to grow up into a stunning beauty. She’s probably already beating the boys off with a stick.

“A nurse. I’m gonna go off to finish that degree and then come back. That’ll let me help Damon and work here.”

Dean looks around the room again, thinks of the bored nurse up front, and then he pulls his hands back and threads them together over his knees.

“Most kids want to leave home and not come back. You must love this town.”

Erin’s eyes turn dreamy, and she drums her incomplete fingers on the tabletop.

“It’s no bustling metropolis, I know, and maybe it seems like a dusty wasteland to you, but this is my home. My brother is here. My best friend is here. I can’t see myself living anywhere else.”

“I’ve been to a lot of small towns. They’ve all got something that makes them special. And hey, at least it’s not Isabella right?”

Erin’s eyes darken a little, her smile becoming something fragile and transparent, and Dean thinks bizarrely of Sam.

“Isabella has its charms too. But I’ll never live there again. Too small and the people…they’re not so good.”

“What’s wrong with the people?”

Erin looks at her hand, the one missing fingers, and her lips tremble for a moment before she rubs the nubs and looks back up.

“They destroy beautiful things. Out of ignorance and fear.”

Dean opens his mouth to ask, but the nurse from the front desk sticks her head in and interrupts.

“Sorry to cut this short sexy, but Erin you’re needed in 114. Mrs. Kovalcheck is having a fit.”

Erin stands up, smoothing her pink uniform down before smiling at Dean.

“Have a good day Agent Vedder.”

Dean watches her walk off and wonders how much Damon told her.

And just who was stuck and crying for her through Sam’s mouth.

 

 

Sam texts him as he’s starting Baby up, and Dean swings around the corner to get him. They stop at Rosa’s, and Dean is pleasantly surprised to learn that Rosa is a real woman. They take a back booth and Dean orders breakfast for lunch and rolls his eyes when Sam goes for the turkey.

“You get anything good?”

His brother dips into the laptop bag and pulls out a sheaf of articles, spreading them out on the table in between them and sorting them as he goes.

“Well. Yes and no. I don’t know that I’ve got any one thing that’s particularly great. Isabella doesn’t have a local paper and what passes for one in Okeene is mostly editorials and fluff pieces. Or AP hits.”

Dean sips from his soda and glances over to see the line cook having a discussion with Rosa, his eyes darting back and forth between here and the two of them.

“But what _did_ you find?”

“Well, get this, we have a couple editorials here from the Isabella preacher decrying sin and decadence. Real fire and brimstone stuff which isn’t really surprising, but it makes him and his congregation suspects. On top of that we have a couple deaths from there so we can look into all of those people. But that’s not the really interesting thing. There’s a paper missing.”

Dean lifts an eyebrow, and then breaks off to smile and thank Rosa when she delivers their food. He pours syrup over the pancakes before he starts cutting them.

“What do you mean missing?”

“Ten years, two weeks, and three days ago, issue number 73, volume 10. It’s missing. Gone from the microfiche, from the storage, just gone. I called the paper and they tried to pull it up from their own records and couldn’t find it. The guy said it was a pretty odd coincidence. When I asked him if he remembered any weird news from then he said he couldn’t recall but he’d talk to some of the old-timers and ask them.”

 Dean chews on the pancakes, fucking delicious, and then points with his fork.

“So that’s a problem we gotta solve. I stopped by the elementary school and got names for the biggest bullies, but we’re gonna need Garth to corroborate our story so the local sheriff lets us talk to them. If we’re lucky their parents won’t lawyer up, but one of the bullies is a girl and her daddy just happens to be that sheriff. Far as I can tell Vincent was being picked on for being into boys.”

Sam’s eyes sweep down, looking at his sandwich thoughtfully, and then he picks it up and takes a delicate bite.

“What makes you say that?”

Dean looks around the diner. The cook has gone back to his work and Rosa is no longer visible anywhere. He leans in over the mess of papers and his plate.

“They kicked him outta the gym showers. Everybody keeps using the words different and sensitive. Kid played a flute Sammy.”

His brother slaps his nose distractedly before sweeping all his papers back into his bag.

“Be a part of the solution Dean. So we’ve got something that judges people morally. It’s focused on Vincent because he was the first to disappear and his stories are being used for the new disappearances. Did you happen to meet anyone else that might be a bigot target?”

Dean thinks of Doris. Sure, he’s a little vain, but she didn’t even look at his chest and this is his best gray suit.

“Yeah, I can think of one.”

Sam chews his sandwich thoughtfully, eyes focused on something out of the window.

“Sammy? You wanna call Garth? He likes you better.”

His brother swallows, wipes his mouth, and then shakes his head.

“We go to the church next. See the preacher. After that we’ll contact Garth and get permission to talk to the kids.”

“Really? I feel like the kids are a better plan first. That congregation is probably half the town and you said yourself the guy isn’t worse than any other backwoods snake oil salesman. The kids were an active threat, and their parents might be the thread to pull.”

Sam shakes his head, eyes still fixed on something out the window that Dean can’t see.

“It’s the preacher next. I can feel it.”

Dean wants to ask. He wants to reach out like Sam did and take his brother’s hand. Find out if Sam’s intuition is something that comes from research Dean hasn’t seen, or from a tiny voice crawling through Sam’s brain.

He wants to tell Sam about Erin, who isn’t on the list as far as Dean can tell but has some strong link to the problem at hand. She’s too old and in the wrong town to have known Vincent personally. It has to be something else.

“Ok. Preacher it is.”

Dean settles the bill and they head out.

 

 

The church has two locations. Sam directs him to the first building, larger and on the edge of “town”, but no one is there. They go further in, and Dean can’t help but notice again just how dead it is here. How utterly quiet and slow it is.

It’s not like they’ve never seen this before, but Damon’s words play in a loop in Dean’s head amplifying that low level alarm that’s been going off ever since Sam said he wanted to take this case.

The second building is an over-sized shack, and Dean looks over to get Sam’s reaction to it.

And stops breathing for a second.

Sam is staring at the church, nostrils flared and fingers clutching his knees in white knuckled terror. Dean puts Baby in reverse automatically, no thought applied at all, and starts to back up before Sam grabs his hand. When Dean turns his head back to look his brother is staring at him like he’s lost his mind.

“Dean. It’s right there. What’s wrong with you?”

He can’t even muster up the voice to respond. Sam shakes his head and gets out and Dean puts Baby back into park.

They climb the rickety steps and Sam tries the door, not even bothering with knocking, and Dean isn’t surprised when it opens right up. After all, what door to Hell is ever locked in a horror movie?

Inside is a large enough space it might have once held between thirty and forty people as long as no local fire marshals showed up. Boxes are stacked high on either side of the space, dates but no identifying words written on them. Folded chairs and folded tables take up the remaining wall space. The center of the room is simply empty, but at the end of the building Dean can see a desk set up with an ancient computer and a landline next to it.

Sam crosses the space, head making little turns as he scans the room for any sign of movement, and Dean flexes his hands and follows his brother. The alarm is ratcheting up now, picking up volume and pace.

His brother hits the power switch on the desktop, but nothing happens. Sam looks over his shoulder at Dean and Dean obediently finds a light switch and tries it. Nothing happens.

“The caution light out on the street was working.”

Dean watches Sam pull salt packets, and he follows suit. Let’s Sam take lead as his brother makes a slow sweep of the building, then turns to Dean and nods his head in the direction of the mobile home sitting on the other side of the lot.

They cross the yard swiftly, grass crunching under their feet, and Sam stops at the door and nods once to Dean before putting his ear to it.

It’s thin enough Sam should be able to pick up on trouble brewing inside. When his brother’s eyes go wide Dean pulls Sam back and kicks the door directly under the handle. It lets out a hideous shriek and flies open, displaying a pitch black space.

The sunlight literally stops at the doorjamb, blackness too complete and solid to be penetrated so easily.

Sam’s foot slides towards it, the rest of his body not betraying his intentions, and Dean grabs him by the shoulders and hauls him in bodily. His little brother comes, falling into Dean’s hug, and Dean can feel the wild beating of Sam’s heart matching his. A scream of desperation sounds beyond the barrier or darkness. A thud. Another scream.

A flashlight can’t pierce the darkness. He looks around the brightly lit scenery and then back into the abyss inside of the mobile home.

Dean swallows, moves Sam behind him, pulls his lighter, strikes the wheel, and then throws it into the blackness inside of the mobile home.

The world explodes.

 

 

Dean wakes up coughing. Sam is asleep in the chair beside his bed, and Dean looks around the room to take in the old TV mounted on the ceiling, the window that stares out at the flat landscape around the hospital, and then at the IV stand and the monitoring machines.

The door to the hallway is closed, but Dean can hear people squeaking their way past every few minutes. Sam is peacefully asleep, foot twitching slightly as he dreams. Dean rubs his face and settles back in the hospital bed.

So, throwing the lighter was a mistake.

He considers the next step. First he needs to figure out just how hurt he is, and then he needs to figure out how much fallout there’s going to be from him _technically_ blowing up a preacher’s house.

With someone inside.

Dean presses on his chest. It’s bruised, the ribs groan a little but they’re all solid as far as he can tell. His lungs feel super-heated, and he keeps his breaths shallow and soft as he moves his hand up to his face.

Eyebrows and eyelashes intact. But his hands are bandaged and now that Dean’s looking at them they distantly ache.

_Great_. Sam let them use painkillers.

“Sam.”

It comes out croaky, and Dean clears his throat and then looks around as if that would summon something. He’s not entirely sure how long ago they dosed him or how much they gave him.

“Sammy!”

His brother jerks awake, arms flailing, and Dean can’t help a giggle.

It’s a testament to how bad it must have been that Sam doesn’t glare at him right away. Instead his brother leans in and puts a hand on Dean’s elbow.

“Something came out of the blast.”

Dean, despite the painkillers, does glare. Sam misses it in his frenzy. He pulls the singed paper out of his pocket and holds it out to Dean. Who, literally, cannot focus on it.

“Sammy. The blast. What happened?”

“No read it first. I’ll tell you after you finish it.”

Dean takes the paper gingerly, turns it over several times to stare alternately at the scribbles on the front and then the burning church on the back, and then hands it back to Sam.

“My hands are fucked up, my ribs ain’t good, and I’m pretty sure I inhaled fire. You let ‘em give me something. It ain’t _story time_. Now tell me what the fuck happened.”

Sam looks both offended and shocked, and he folds the story carefully before he starts talking.

“There was a gas leak. That’s the official story. I left out the lighter and told them we knocked on the door, heard someone inside, and then the place lit up. They’ve already called Garth for confirmation that we’re agents here on the disappearance. Which was actually handled really well considering we’re not locked up. Either way the locals aren’t happy but they’re not going to fight it. They were still combing through what’s left but they think the preacher was in there.”

Dean coughs and Sam magics up ice chips and spoons him one.

“Easy. You took the brunt because you stepped in front of me.”

Of course he stepped in front of Sam. That was a stupid comment.

“Which you didn’t have to do by the way. We could have both turned and gotten back.”

Because they had _so much_ warning.

“And I can hear you thinking sarcastically.”

Dean purses his lips and then opens his mouth for more ice.

“You got lucky. All the burns are superficial. But you won’t be handling any fine manipulation for a week or two while the burns blister and heal.”

He rubs his face again and Sam lightly smacks his wrists.

“Stop putting pressure on them.”

Dean wants to roll his eyes, but the door opens and Erin pokes her head into the room. Her blue eyes are huge, wet, and Dean instantly feels like he’s on defense and he doesn’t know why. Sam’s head tilts in confusion.

“I- I heard that- I’m so sorry.”

Sam stands, great length unfolding so that he towers over the girl. She flicks her eyes to him nervously and then back to Dean.

“’S ok Erin. Not your fault.”

His brother is looking back and forth between the two of them, confusion set in every line of his face.

“No it’s- of course it isn’t. I just. I don’t know. I wanted to say I was sorry.”

Sam’s brow crinkles, and he takes a step away from the bed and towards her.

“Erin? I’m afraid we haven’t met. Agent Young.”

Her blue eyes fly to Sam fully now, and they well over with tears before she wipes them with her mangled hand and holds the full one out to Sam. Sam takes it awkwardly and shakes, casting glances back to Dean the whole time.

“Erin. I’m your maid. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Sam’s focused on her, too intensely Dean might add if he didn’t think it would make the situation worse, and Erin is shifting under his scrutiny. Dean slips a socked foot out from under the blanket and kicks Sam in the side.

His brother jumps and Erin scrambles backward.

“I just- so they’re getting your discharge papers together. I have the room set up at the motel with burn cream and extra water. Again. Just sorry.”

And with that she’s gone, and Sam turns to look at Dean.

“Who was that?”

“She said who she was. Erin. She’s the maid at the motel.”

Dean wants to see where this will go. If Sam will show his hand. Just in case his brother isn’t as unaware of what’s happening to him as he acts.

“Yeah, but _who_ is she? She was staring at us like she knew us.”

For a moment he’s flabbergasted. He can only stare at Sam as his brother keeps glancing over his shoulder at the door and then back at Dean.

“She _works at our motel_ Sammy. She _does_ know us. Or me at least. You’ve been sleeping or distracted.”

His brother’s brow crinkles again, and then right before Sam can voice whatever is bothering him the door opens and the doctor walks in with a clipboard and a serious case of resting grumpy face.

Dean lets Sam handle the discharge info.

 

 

_ The Blind Priest _

_Every day the people answered the bells and came one by one through the door of the chapel and took their seats. At the back of the room stood the priest, feared by all and loved by none. Every day they sat and listened as he told them what to hate. What to fear._

_For all his talk of an all-seeing God the priest did not seem to realize the irony of his position. He was terribly blind._

_The people came in and out every day, but he did not see that they did not love him. He did not realize that all of his congregation simply came to see him out of guilt for the sins they committed._

_All the priest could do was blindly fumble in their hearts, building hatred and resentment in each one as he drove them further and further apart._

_One day a stranger came. He was different from the people of the town. The priest feared him. He told the people to come together and remove the stranger, that it was God’s will._

_But when the people gathered around the stranger he burst with heat and light and the church was engulfed in flames. The people watched as their blind priest burned, betrayed by his own hatred and foolishness_.

 

“Well that one was a little less Disney and a little more Grimm’s.”

Sam looks up from his laptop at Dean, one eyebrow cocked.

“You thought the first one was Disney?”

“Sure. Ain’t Casper Disney? And that fucking Haunted Mansion thing?”

His brother rolls his eyes and goes back to typing.

“Sam. _Sammy_.”

Eyes cut back up to him, long hair falling in them and driving Dean nuts.

“This one fit in the journal?”

Sam gets up, crosses the room, and plops down beside Dean before sliding the page up against its original edges. They don’t fit as well because of the scorching, but it works enough for Dean to be sure.

“I think we got it wrong.”

“Got what wrong?”

“It ain’t the kid that’s the victim here. At least, not anymore.”

Sam closes the journal and leans back against the headboard, shoulder pressing against Dean’s.

“Explain.”

“These stories? This is how people are disappearing or dying. This is how everything is going down. And all these people at one point or another were being assholes to Vincent. The drunk and neglectful mom, the homophobic preacher, they all had a hand in him being ostracized or torn down. And two out of two had one of his little tales right next to it.”

Sam’s mouth works as he looks at the notebook, and then he puts it down in his lap and threads his fingers together. Dean can tell Sam is about to deliver a hell of a lecture.

“Yeah. It’s a big coincidence. But Dean look at it logically. Vincent disappeared first. On top of that, his mom may not have been the best but she loved him. You could see that. And his story about her saw that too. Sure, he’s a weird kid. But a killer? Some kind of magical threat? _No_. He’s just an eight year old in a small town full of bigots.”

“I’m not saying he’s magical. I’m saying maybe he ain’t around anymore. You and I both know from experience that once you turn ghost you aren’t exactly in control of everything you do.”

His brother’s fingers trace delicate little whorls on the front cover of the notebook. Dean thinks again of taking Sam’s hand, and then shakes his head to clear it of the drugs.

“It doesn’t fit for me. How’d he die? Where’s the body? Assuming he was already dead when he disappeared into thin air what happened first? Somebody would know that he died. His mom at least would have noticed him lacking a pulse. She may have been wasted when we got there, but I have to imagine she was drinking less when she had a kid to watch.”

Dean looks across the room at the reprint of Van Gogh on the wall. Sunflowers dripping in light. The fuzziness of the painkillers helps him to float for a bit, simply thinking while he looks at the soft and blurry lines.

“What if he’s one of Azazel’s kids?”

Sam makes a surprised noise, and when Dean turns his brother looks like he’s been slapped.

Dean smells blood in the water.

“What the hell are you talking about? One, he’s way too young, and two when Azazel went so did everything else.”

At that Dean leans in, smelling the panic on Sam. The guilt.

“But did it? Because I gotta say Sammy, you’ve been acting pretty strange.”

Sam swallows, hard, eyes leaving Dean and landing on the laptop, flitting back to Dean.

“Yes. After Azazel died the visions went away.”

When they were kids, moving from town to town and dealing with more stress and weight than any child should ever know, Dean had been forced to teach Sam a lot of things a kid his age shouldn’t have been trained in. How to clean and load a gun, how to barricade a door, and most importantly how to lie. It was vital that they be able to look adults in the eye and lie without being spotted. Otherwise child services would have taken them both and scattered them to the wind.

Eye contact, brief answers without details, or misleading half-truths.

Sam had ended up being better at it than Dean.

“Great. But right now. Since we started this case. They still gone?”

His brother shifts, and Dean doesn’t manage to suppress the urge to yell “Aha!”

Sam’s bitchface is epic.

“No. Ok? Happy? Something’s…something’s happening here. I dreamed about Vincent the night before I searched him on the internet. I dreamed about him trapped in some place cold and dark, terrified, and I knew we had to come.”

Dean presses his shoulder more firmly against Sam’s. Feels the comforting heat of Sam’s body and the way his brother presses back.

“Ok Sammy. That’s ok. We’ll figure it out.”

“I didn’t start drinking again. I swear Dean.  I-”

He pushes himself, turns his head and presses a kiss to the edge of Sam’s lips. Feels his brother stiffen under him in shock.

“I didn’t think you did. It’s ok. It’s something else, and we’ll figure it out.”

All the tension goes out of Sam. He presses his forehead against Dean’s and takes a deep and slow breath. Lets it out without breaking contact.

“Thank you Dean.”

Dean doesn’t have a good response for that.

 

 

When Dean wakes up his hands are agony. He’s propped up in the bed, unsure of when he fell asleep, and Sam is beside him with Vincent’s notebooks piled up on his chest.

Dean yawns, stretches carefully, and then gets up and goes to the bathroom. He manages to curl his digits enough to unzip his pants and pull himself out, but it’s not a fun process. He’s pretty sure he’s going to have to keep moving them so that they keep _some_ flexibility, but he’s not sure he can do that without at least an edge of a painkiller buzz.

It’s problematic. He’s gotta keep his wits about him, but he’s gotta keep his flexibility too. More importantly he’s gotta figure out how to come at this. At the height of Sam’s powers they simply used the visions. They took as many clues as they could and broke the cases down from there. But if Sam’s dreams are helping at all Dean hasn’t noticed and it doesn’t seem like Sam has either.

Going after the preacher was Sam’s gut, Dean knows that motivation well enough to spot it, so everything they’ve managed to figure out so far has been on their own. Which means even the slim upside of the damn visions is gone.

Sam comes in to piss while Dean is struggling with the bandages, and his brother shakes off and washes his hands before carefully stripping Dean’s and then gently rubbing the ointment in.

“The sheriff is next. He wanted to meet with you to discuss anything you might have seen or heard. I want you to go talk to him while I head over to the city hall. I want to go through the death records on the day the paper is missing. See if maybe whatever isn’t in the archives is listed there.”

Dean watches Sam’s big fingers gently sliding the ointment on. Watches and wonders at how very careful those hands can be despite their size. He knows those hands. Once upon a time he knew them perfectly. Knew how they caught and dragged on his skin, how they cupped his shoulders, his ass, clung and pulled at him to get him deeper or to get deeper in him.

Once, but not anymore.

It’s impulsive, something that rises out of him like a ghost from the grave, and Dean rides along with the wave as he presses his lips into Sam’s. There’s a beat where Sam stays still, impassive, and Dean thinks that nothing will come of it. That he’s made a fool of himself and turned an already tense time into something worse.

And then Sam is kissing him back. Sam is tilting his head to open his mouth, to push his tongue against Dean’s lips for entry, and Dean lets him. Relishes in the old feel of it. The perfect recall brought up by Sam’s mouth. By Sam’s touch.

He keeps his hands floating, greasy with ointment and swollen with blisters, lets them slide over the air just above Sam’s skin as they press together closer and closer.

The knock on the door sends Dean reeling backwards, Sam’s face still tilted and lips still in position for just a moment before he pushes his hair back and leaves the bathroom without a word. Dean can just hear the terse tones of Sam talking to someone before the hotel room door closes and his brother is back with an envelope.

“Just got delivered for you.” Sam drops it on the bathroom counter and starts wrapping Dean’s hands.

And Dean waits until Sam is done, until his brother has left the bathroom without a word and starting dressing in his suit on the other side of the thin door to finally breathe again.

 

 

By the time Dean finally gets his suit on Sam is gone. He pulls the curtains back just enough to see that Sam has left him the Impala in the interest of walking off whatever is going on in his head.

Dean goes back in the room just long enough to gather the keys and his wallet before his eyes fall on the note he almost forgot. He rips it open carefully and reads the graceful cursive writing.

It’s from Doris.

_Agent, I thought of something. There’s an old abandoned house in the woods just outside of Isabella. It was a famous destination for the local high school kids to get drunk or high until they got busted one too many times. I know that Vincent used to go there, and that he’d carved out a section of the basement for himself. I’ve heard the other kids talking about it._

_Perhaps there’s some sort of clue there?_

He files it away, folding the note up before slipping it into his jacket pocket. Then he heads out to the car.

She starts with a roar and then rumbles comfortingly underneath his grip. It makes his hands ache, but it soothes the rest of him. Dean is glad to have a destination. It takes minutes to get to the sheriff’s office, and Dean parks up front and walks through the doors. The place is a little hole in the wall, and the officer at the front desk looks up and instantly flies into movement.

The sheriff is there moments later, before Dean can even introduce himself, and Dean internally curses at Sam. This guy is pissed.

“I want whatever number I need to talk to your goddamn supervisor.”

Dean feels his lips purse. Supervisor. Like Dean gave him a bad meal or a sassy attitude instead of showed up to find out what happened to a missing kid.

“I can give you that number sheriff. Let’s step into your office.”

“I’ll say where we step into boy. Brandon! Bring the report while I call the agent’s boss!”

Dean steps lively to keep up with the man, he’s got quite a long stride, and they cross into the sheriff’s office. Dean drops the card with Garth’s number printed on it on the desk and watches the sheriff fumble to lift it in his rage before finally getting a handle on it. A young officer comes rushing in and drops a file off before disappearing.

The sheriff’s face stays twisted, furious as he dials the number and then starts barking at Garth. Whatever Garth says doesn’t cool him down, but it keeps him busy. Dean lifts the file and starts flipping through as the sheriff starts arguing with the other hunter.

Not much that Dean couldn’t have guessed. There are pictures of the burnt out building that underline how very lucky Dean and Sam got in the explosion. There’s a charred corpse in what Dean assumes used to be the kitchen, curled up on the floor and hugging its head.

They’re blaming it on a gas leak. No mention of Dean or Sam in any of the reports. Dean feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise and his internal alarms start to go off. He looks up at the sheriff and sees the man studying him.

When did he hang up?

“Your boss says you got permission to be here. So tell me Agent Vedder, what exactly makes you think the disappearance of one queer kid is worth a federal investigation?”

Caution wars with anger, and Dean fights to keep his hands relaxed, to not punch the smug grin right off the prick’s face. He’s always hated bullies. He grips the file tightly.

“The young man you mentioned went missing in an extremely odd way. The Bureau took interest. And now that we’re here we intend to find out what exactly happened to Vincent. You are aware that hate crimes fall under federal jurisdiction?”

Dean can see that he’s hit a sore spot. The Sheriff leans forward, chair creaking and fists balled up on the desk. His face is bright red, and he’s starting to sweat.

“Hate crime? Ain’t nobody interested in that boy. 'Specially not the way he wanted. You ain’t got nothing to search for ‘round here. I’d suggest you pack up and roll on back to Quantico where you belong.”

Dean swallows and then leans in himself.

“I’d like to talk to a few of the local kids that knew Vincent. I’m aware they need representation. This will go best for you if you just sit back and let us do our job.”

“It’ll be a cold day in Hell before I let you talk to the kids around here. Vincent was a piece of trash. Came from trash and kept being trash. I won’t let you scar little kids because you got a bug up your ass about him.”

Dean wonders what the guy would say if he told him that Hell is usually cold. Especially the deepest parts.

“You can let me and sit in or you can watch me bring out a warrant and close you out of the investigation entirely.”

He wishes Sam was here. Sam could argue the legalities of this better. Dean has exhausted just about everything he knows on the subject.

“Now you- you listen-”

The Sheriff’s face has gone an even more alarming shade of red, his finger shaking in front of Dean. His shirt is soaked in sweat, his face drips with it.

Something inside of Dean tells him to roll the chair back. He narrowly avoids hitting the young officer who has stuck his head in to say something. Whatever it is, he never gets it out.

The Sheriff stands up, mouth gaping like a fish out of water, and make a grandiose hand gesture to Dean and Brandon before he lights up in flames.

“Fucking shit!”

Dean is up and moving while Brandon stands in the door screaming like a girl in a sixties slasher. He rips the extinguisher down from the wall and starts to spray the Sheriff, but the flames don’t seem to care too much about the chemicals. Instead the Sheriff continues to burn as Brandon’s screams get louder. Dean can hear people shouting out in the main area, can hear a fire siren somewhere off in the distance.

And a part of him, a vicious and wild part of him that has only grown since his time in Hell, tells him to just stop fighting and let the man suffer and burn.

Instead Dean rips his coat off and falls on the Sheriff. He pats and slaps, ignoring the pain in his hands ratcheting up with the pressure and exposure to heat, and then there’s a teenage girl there with him patting and slapping too.

By the time the fire is out there’s not much left of the Sheriff. He’s dead. Without question.

Brandon, the child cop, stands in horror in the doorway as the firemen come rushing in. But there’s nothing left for them to do. Dean moves out of the way of them and the paramedics though. The girl that helped him, a pretty blonde with a top cut as low as could possibly be acceptable, stands shakily and looks around the room before following Dean out onto the street.

He’s still got the file somehow. Beside him the girl struggles to light a cigarette and Dean takes pity and helps her although it makes his fingers scream.

“You ok?”

She lifts an eyebrow, looks over her shoulder into the chaos in the police station, and then looks back at him.

“Yeah. Fine. I’m fine.”

Dean can see her checking out the merchandise. That alarm that started to rise in him and then was drowned out in the adrenaline rush of the spontaneous combustion starts back up again. That’s a pretty quick recovery time for a teenage girl.

“What were you doing here?”

She looks over her shoulder again, smoke trailing out of her mouth idly.

“Visiting my dad.”

Dean looks too, follows her gaze, but the only cops he can spot are the young officer and one ancient old man shuffling back and forth nervously and wringing his hands. Law and order has never seemed so helpless.

“He not in?”

She laughs at that, her eyes shifting back to slide down to Dean’s ass.

“You could say that. What are _you_ doing here? I’ve never seen you before.”

Dean watches her flick the ashes on the cigarette. She’s the kind of pretty that’s too sharp, too hard, and will not age gracefully.

“I’m Special Agent Vedder. I’m here investigating the disappearance of Vincent Holley.”

Her eyes shift away then, guilt and confusion flashing briefly across her face, and Dean follows the expression carefully.

“Huh. Just thought he ran away.” She flicks the cigarette to the ground and stomps on it before turning to go back inside.

“Hey. Miss.”

She turns back. She’s not checking Dean out anymore. There’s no question she’s fleeing the scene.

“Yeah? What do you want?”

“What’s your name?”

That eyebrow lifts again, and there’s a little curl to her mouth that would be a sneer if she wasn’t trying so hard to control it. Dean catalogues every red flag as she turns back to face forward and crosses the threshold into the building.

“Chelsea.”

Dean feels the gears spin, click into place, and he curses the painkillers as he takes a step back from the building and watches the teenage girl cross deeper to see the charred remains of her father.

What the fuck is going on here.


	3. So Get This

Dean meets up with Sam on the sidewalk on the way to the town hall. It’s not far from here, and it’s obvious Sam has come out because of all the sirens going off around the corner. His brother looks him up and down and then gets in the Impala without a word. They ride back to the motel where Dean collapses on the bed and realizes that the file is tucked inside his jacket.

He pulls it out as Sam sits down on the bed beside him. His brother takes the file silently and starts flipping through.

“What happened over there?”

“The sheriff was telling me what he thought about our investigation and Vincent. Then he lit on fire.”

Sam nods thoughtfully, his face composed into a studious expression that Dean knows all too well. Obsession.

“Then I met two of the bullies Doris named that picked on Vincent.”

Sam winces, flipping pages in the file.

“Did the kids see the fire?”

“Yeah Sammy. The kids saw the fire. Except they ain’t kids. One was a deputy and the other was jailbait.”

Sam’s hands are shaking on the file, and Dean reaches out and touches one only to have Sam drop the folder and come away with a ragged piece of paper. Dean doesn’t have to ask. He can see the now familiar art style on the back. The star badge of a Western Sheriff sitting in a pile of ashes.

“What the fuck. Sam. What the fuck is going on here?”

Sam looks up from the page, face pale and lips that odd shade of gray, and then he looks back down at the paper.

“He deserved it Dean. Demons I get. People are crazy.”

Dean sits up and looks closer at Sam.

“Sammy? Hey. Hey look at me little brother.”

“Get this. Look. Get this. Hey Dean get this. Dean. Hey Dean get this. Dean-”

Dean shakes Sam, and his brother’s mechanical and flat rambling stops. Sam turns his head to look at Dean like he’s just woken up.

“What? What happened?”

“We’re leaving. That’s what happened. We’re packing up and leaving. I’ll call Garth, get him to send someone else out. Another hunter can handle this one. We’re fucking gone Sammy. Now.”

Sam shakes his head, grabs Dean’s wrist so tight Dean can feel the bruises forming.

“No. No. I don’t know what’s happening but going somewhere else won’t stop it. I know that. Dean. Dean it’ll stay with me no matter where we go. The best shot we have is finding out the truth.”

Dean wants to argue. Wants to scream at the top of his lungs into Sam’s face until his brother figures out how very utterly stupid that whole plan is. But Sam stops him. His brother leans in and kisses him.

And then Dean is being pushed back on the bed. Sam’s hands are everywhere it seems. He hears the slithering noise of the file and the story he hasn’t looked at hitting the floor as Sam’s left hand slides up his chest and starts working the buttons on his shirt.

It’s been so long. So long since he had Sam like this, and Dean doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want it to stop, but Sam isn’t well. Sam is being consumed by whatever is in this town, whatever happened to Vincent Holley. If there is a ghost it seems to be haunting Sam more than it is the town that created it.

Sam’s got his shirt open, hands rucking up Dean’s undershirt and sliding across the skin stretched over his ribs. And Dean, while he wants very badly to be a good big brother and stop Sam, push for a hasty retreat over the border of Okeene and far from Isabella, wants even more to have his brother back. To drive all the darkness out of Sam’s head.

He gives in. Later he may regret it, as he does so many other things, but in this moment this is what Dean wants. This is what he needs. He _needs_ Sam.

His hands are too badly burned to be graceful, but Sam sits up and pulls his own clothes off before undoing Dean’s pants as Dean toes off his shoes. Sam is hungry, forceful, and there’s no sign of the paleness or shaking in him as he pulls Dean’s remaining sock off and then kisses his way up from Dean’s ankle to his cock.

They should slow it down. Dean should do something to make it tender and gentle, to make it something more like reconciliation, but Sam’s setting the pace and Dean isn’t able to form words to argue. His brother’s mouth wraps around him, tongue gracefully flicking the slit and lips pressing tight to soft and sensitive skin beneath the head. Dean fights through the pain to sink his fingers into Sam’s hair and rub at his little brother’s scalp the way he knows Sam likes.

Years of practice give Dean the control to not blow in Sam’s mouth when his brother manages to sink all the way down his cock. He’s pushing into Sam’s throat, the muscles smooth and wet, enveloping him and alternating suction and friction. His toes curl into the bedspread and he twists his fingers a little and pull’s Sam’s hair to let him know that he’s gotta lighten up.

Sam pulls back, just the tongue flicking at the head and slicking Dean up, and he shoots Dean a question that Dean nods to. Sam swivels, straddling Dean’s chest and sliding his knees back until they’re pressed underneath Dean’s armpits. His brother’s ass is just as tight as always, and Dean is grateful for the distraction. With the welts and bandages he can’t do much to prep Sam, but he can do this.

Carefully, so carefully, Dean puts his bandaged hands on Sam’s ass and leads him down. He nips at a cheek, feels Sam’s warning scrape of teeth too light to hurt on his cock, and then he spreads the cheeks and licks across Sam’s hole. His brother’s back is arched, the position denying him the ability to get real depth on Dean’s cock, but he makes up for it by wrapping one big hand around the base and jacking it up to meet his mouth and then back down to spread his own spit on Dean’s flesh.

Dean takes it for a sign and starts lapping at Sam, working his tongue around the hole and then pressing it in to spear Sam. His brother moans around his cock, mouth working furiously, and Dean starts to mimic Sam’s actions. When Sam tongues the head rapidly Dean flicks his own tongue against Sam’s hole, when Sam sucks and slides up and down Dean bobs his tongue in and out, fucking Sam with it. They keep pace with one another, falling seamlessly in time without the need for discussion or consideration.

It’s been so long since they’ve been in sync with this. Dean drunkenly thinks that it gets him off more than the actual sex does. The pleasure of knowing that he and Sam are a unit again, locked together and in step against the whole world around them.

Sam’s pulls off his cock with a slurp, turns around, and presses his lips to Dean’s as his hand disappears behind him. He fingers himself quickly, lips demanding and firm, and Dean presses back. Opens his mouth to give Sam entrance and tastes himself there as Sam licks into him. And then Sam is sliding down onto him without breaking the kiss.

Dean lets out a whine and Sam sucks it up as he pushes Dean past the resistance and deeper into him. And there it is. The heat of Sam, big body burning against Dean and hole clenched around him, and Dean is enveloped in it. Burning in it. Not a good metaphor considering the last two deaths, but Dean’s too far in it to think more. He wraps his arms around Sam and pulls so that they’re pressed closer. And the kiss keeps going, breath shared back and forth between them as Sam pants and groans grinding down and down until Dean is fully inside.

He pushes up, nowhere to go and no hope of getting deeper, and Sam grunts and then pulls himself up before slamming back down. He’s riding Dean then, breathy little pants forced out of him as he spears himself over and over. All Dean can do is take it. He twists his hips, tries to give Sam more, but his brother is fully in control.

Even through the bandages he can feel the powerful muscles of Sam’s back moving under his hands, and Sam bites Dean’s lip before he sits up and starts to ride Dean in earnest. One big hand wraps around his own cock and Dean wants to help but it physically hurts to try and the gauze won’t feel very sexy. Instead he grips Sam’s hips and holds on as his brother rides him and jerks himself off.

It’s a sight, beautiful and achingly familiar, and Dean drinks it in. The look of Sam there, keeping Dean down, keeping them together, and most importantly keeping them alive.

And then Sam’s face shifts, twists, and he comes without any warning and tightens down on Dean. Dean takes over then, heels pressing into the bedspread to give him a little leverage so he can fuck Sam through his orgasm. He finally hits it, emptying himself inside of Sam and breathing hard like he’s just run a marathon.

Sam collapses on top of him, sweaty and hot, and Dean breathes slow in and out and lets the heat and the rise and fall of Sam’s chest lull him to sleep.

 

When Dean wakes up he can hear the shower running. He rubs his face before he remembers his injured hands, and then he pushes himself up and rolls out of the bed. His legs feel like jelly, and a couple steps around the room get them a little bit more stable under him. He’s just about to head for the bathroom and join Sam when he hears the knock at the door.

Dean grabs the nearest bedspread, wraps it around his waist, and then opens the door. On the other side is Erin, towels in her hands and a shocked look on her face. It takes Dean a second to realize how obvious it is that he just had sex. He tries to judge from her face if the shock is part of the bigotry theme he’s experienced here or just typical for a virginal teen.

When she looks to the bathroom door and then back to him, mouth working but cheeks not turning red, Dean decides it’s something else. Although damned if he knows _what_ it is because nothing makes sense in this goddam town.

“Thanks. For the towels.”

Erin nods, wordless and still pale, and then releases them into Dean’s hands and spins on one foot before heading for the office. Dean closes the door and heads back for the bathroom. He’s going to figure out what the deal with Erin is at the same time he figures out what exactly they’re hunting right now.

Which, at this point, seems like never.

Sam is finishing up, turning the water off, and Dean steps in carefully keeping his hands out of the shower curtain. Sam huffs at him, no real annoyance on his face but a playful version of it that Dean hasn’t seen in years.

“I need help Sammy. Got two bad paws.”

Sam responds by turning the water back on and then maneuvering Dean under it. He keeps his hands out of the spray and stands still as Sam starts to lather him up.

“Before you suggest it I am not going to feed you.”

Dean pouts and Sam laughs and starts scrubbing the soap off him.

“What’s our next step Dean?”

Dean wants to ask Sam that, but he’s afraid that Sam will have an answer. Or that whatever is inside of Sam, driving him on and on, will use Sam to answer.

On top of that Dean realizes in this moment that he never told Sam what he learned at the Sheriff’s office, and Sam hasn’t told him dick about the town hall records.

“Did you find anything?”

Sam’s mouth curls in distaste, a look Dean knows well, and his brother kneels to rub soap up and down his legs.

“Yeah but I’m pretty sure it’s unrelated.”

“What was it?”

Sam tilts his head and studies a scar on Dean’s thigh. Dean isn’t sure Sam’s ever seen it before, and he kind of likes how Sam studies it. He shakes his head to dismiss the thought and sends water flying.

“Death certificates for a married couple. Elkharts, Tom and Lucille. They were in a car accident. Bad road conditions.”

The name rings a bell, but Dean pushes it away to focus on not forgetting to tell Sam the mind-fucking detail he figured out a second time.

“Ok. Well, I met Chelsea and Brandon. The bullies.”

Sam lifts an eyebrow.

“You mentioned that I think. Before things got wonky. What happened?”

“They’re grown up. Well, mostly. Brandon’s probably old enough to drink and Chelsea looks like she’s getting ready for her first barely legal video.”

Sam’s hands stop on Dean’s legs. His eyes narrow and then he stands up and puts his hands on Dean’s waist.

“Where did you put the yearbooks?”

Dean struggles to remember and then jerks his head to the left.

“They’re on the floor by the couch. Why?”

Sam speeds through washing his hair as he mutters, partially to Dean but mostly to himself.

“I found the articles five days ago. They were all new. Victor Holley was eight years old when he went missing. But his mom…”

Sam tilts Dean’s head, gently despite his hurry, and Dean lets the shampoo be rinsed out and waits for Sam to turn off the water before he pulls the curtain aside. Sam trails him with a towel as Dean storms into the main part of the hotel room and plucks up the yearbooks, the fever gripping him the same way it is Sam now.

 _2002_. The latest yearbook is for 2002. Ten years ago.

“How the fuck did we miss this?”

Sam’s fingers drag over the yearbook cover, tracing the numbers.

“It’s the missing paper. Remember? It’s from ten years ago too.”

Dean turns his head to fully look at Sam.

“Sammy. We’ve talked to all these people. All of them. They all said he was an eight year old. They all said the disappearance was recent. Doris at the school named all those kids like they were still little. So what the fuck is happening here?”

His brother absent-mindedly wraps a towel around him as he stares at the yearbook.

“Something has made them forget. Either they just recently forgot that ten years have passed, or they’ve been thinking he just disappeared for ten years.”

“And then, what, they kept re-publishing the article about his disappearance until you happened to stumble over it?”

Sam’s lips thin out, and he turns around and opens up the laptop. His fingers fly on the keys for several minutes, and then Dean watches his brother load up the web browser history and jump back to five days ago when they started their journey to Isabella.

There is a single entry for the entire day. _Search The Web_.

Dean puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder and feels how cold his brother’s skin is. His heart rate soars, and Dean pulls Sam around to get a good look at his face. Sam is pale, and cold, but he doesn’t look like he’s slipping away. He doesn’t look like he’s being taken over.

“Dean. I didn’t read an article. I never read an article.”

“I saw you sitting at the computer. I saw you researching.”

Sam shakes his head. Digs in the bag by the table the laptop is on and pulls out a battered old notebook he uses to take research notes. When he flips to the most recent pages Dean sees his brother’s familiar scrawl documenting the missing articles, all the information Dean has found out. Sam flips back two pages.

 _Vincent’s_ handwriting stares up at them. The words fly across the pages, tiny tear marks evident where Sam dug too deep with the pen when he was writing them. They populate the front and back of ten pages, and the first part is all the logical and factual information of Vincent’s disappearance that Sam originally quoted to Dean. The rest is simply desperation.

_Help me please, I’m trapped here, I asked them not to, Help me please, Hey Dean get this, Help me Please, It’s cold here, Help me please, I smell the water and the antiseptic, Help me please, It’s so dark, Help me please, Erin, Erin where are you, HELP ME PLEASE, What’s happening to you, Look at me little brother, HELP, HELP, HELP_

Sam’s hands are shaking, and he stands up and turns to Dean. It’s not all suddenly clear, but the picture is certainly more focused. Dean wasn’t wrong when he said that Sam was being haunted. The question now is _how_. How did the little boy’s ghost travel so far to find them? How is it taking Sam over when Sam’s wearing all the protection necessary against that in the form of his tattoo?

“I can’t. I can’t Dean. I can’t live with something else I didn’t want inside of me.”

Dean feels the words like a blow to his midsection. He wraps his arms around Sam and pulls him in, tries to give some of his warmth back to his brother although he’s been standing out here dripping wet with nothing more than a towel for too long.

“No Sammy. No it’s ok. He’s not in you. He’s not in you. He might be sending you something, like a remote connection. You remember you told me ‘bout that? How someone else can just get on your computer and look at it like it’s theirs? That’s what he’s doing. He’s not in you he’s logging into your desktop.”

There’s silence for a beat, Sam’s breath coming rapidly, and then Dean feels Sam’s lips pressed against his skull.

“That’s not a great simile.”

Dean squeezes Sam tight.

“ _You’re_ not a great simile.”

There’s no laughter, but Sam’s skin starts to heat back up under Dean’s embrace.

 

 

They ride in silence to the abandoned house Doris sent the note to him about. Something is bugging Dean, ticking at the back of his brain, but he can’t quite get it to come forward. He’s not sure if it’s the low level alarm caused by the Sheriff taking them out of official documents, or the Elkhart name that he dimly recognizes.

When they finally park the Impala and head into the woods Sam’s eyes are darting everywhere. They crunch their way through the undergrowth and Dean pulls his jacket tighter and keeps his eyes on Sam. It’s colder here somehow, the trees wrapping around them, bare branches filtering out what little sunshine the day has.

The house looms ahead, only parts of the walls of a first floor still there. It burned a long time ago as far as Dean can tell, and while the partitions for the rooms are still mostly there it is definitely a shell and not a shelter. They split up without a word and look for the entrance to the basement. Sam calls out first to let Dean know he’s found it.

The stairs creak ominously under Sam’s weight, and Dean wants to pull him back and go down first but he also doesn’t want to risk being the cause of them finally collapsing. When Sam reaches the bottom Dean follows, stepping where he saw Sam step and keeping his body braced for a fall.

He’s kind of amazed when they hold again, and then Sam flicks on his flashlight and Dean follows suit.

The basement has escaped the majority of the fire damage. It’s sooty down here, and smells damp and old, but there are rooms and doors and Dean sticks close to Sam as they try each one. They’re littered with ancient beer bottles, condoms, cigarette and roach butts. All the signs of teenagers that like to party. But at the end of the hall is a closed door with a sign on it that says keep out. One of those joke plastic ones that you get from the store in the vain hopes that really bad people still obey signs.

Dean steps in front of Sam then, turning the knob and pushing the door open. It’s obvious instantly that this is Vincent’s hideout. The walls are covered in chalk drawings just like the ones on the stories. There’s a sleeping bag in the corner with a battery-operated lantern next to it, and Dean crosses the old floor and turns it on.

Sam is looking everywhere, fingers dragging on the edges of the chalk outlines without disturbing them. Dean turns back to the little nest and catalogues the candy and jerky wrappers, the bag with extra clothes, and then stops where he sees a little blanket hanging over a boxy shape.

Usually this is when he’d call out to Sam, but Dean hesitates for a reason he can’t quite name. He pulls the blanket aside, and there it is.

Composition notebooks, just like the others, stacked beside a collection of Carver Edlund novels.

Dean picks one up at random, flipping through it. The spine is cracked, some of the pages dog-eared or highlighted, but the book is well-loved and used. They all are. Dean sits down on the floor and opens one of the notebooks.

These aren’t ripped. There’s no illustrations. There’s just pages and pages of Vincent’s now familiar hand-writing.

_The world is full of heroes._

_Maybe not Batman or Superman heroes, but they are heroes. They don’t have capes or powers most of the time, they don’t have long funny names that are hard to pronounce and worse to try to spell, and they aren’t taught about in Mrs. Sowell’s eighth grade English class._

Dean feels Sam step up behind him, and he waits for his little brother to speak first.

“He was a fan.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.” Dean flips a few more pages. Vincent was a _big_ fan. The kind who wrote fanfiction. It’s not terrible, but it’s pretty obviously written by a little boy. The grammar and word-choice is beyond where he should be but the themes are simple. Dean flips pages and reads passages at random. Sam sits beside him and takes another notebook to copy what Dean’s doing.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that Vincent was not just a fan of the series, he was a _huge_ fan of Sam in particular. The stories focus on Sam’s point of view, Sam’s heroism, and Dean doesn’t mind it one bit. It’s good that people recognize Sam for what he is. Dean’s role in the stories seems to be left as Sam’s support, Sam’s muscle, which is a misstep on Vincent’s part because Sam is the stronger fighter, and Sam‘s comic relief.

Dean glances over to Sam and sees a low flush in his brother’s cheeks. It’s a familiar look, Sam getting praise he doesn’t want or think he earned, but when Sam clears his throat Dean leans over to see what exactly has embarrassed him.

Sex.

There is a sex scene on the page Sam is staring at.

It’s very basic, obviously written by someone with no working knowledge of the act, but it’s there.

Vincent was writing _erotic_ fanfiction.

“Dean? I know you already asked this, but what the fuck is happening here?”

Dean takes the notebook out of Sam’s hands carefully and collects everything together. He looks around the room once more and then stands and nods to Sam to follow.

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling we already know someone who does. Come on. It’s time to question the Prom Queen.”

Sam stands up behind him, bending over to flick off the lantern and then following Dean up the rickety stairs and back to the Impala.

 

The sheriff’s house is surrounded by cars. The locals come to pay their respects no doubt, grieve together over the deaths that have plagued their community. In a town like this the local sheriff and preacher are a big part of the structure and organization. Dean imagines they’re all reeling.

But he doubts Chelsea has suddenly found it in her to grieve over her father’s death or put up with the wailing of women her mother’s age.

Dean drives past, cruising around town with Sam and looking for anything that seems a likely place for them to be. Finally inspiration strikes again and he calls the motel. It rings three times before Damon answers.

 _“Okeene Motel_. _Damon Elkhart speaking._ ”

He jerks a little and Sam’s hand crashes down on the wheel to steady it. Dean gives his brother a look and then pulls over onto the side of the road.

Fucking _that’s_ where he heard the name.

_“Hello?”_

“Hey. Damon. This is Agent Vedder.”

Erin’s name has been littered throughout the haunting. Erin’s parents died the day Vincent left the real world. Whatever is going on here she’s a part of it.

_“Agent! I gotta ask man, I know you probably can’t answer, but is the sheriff related to the preacher? Is all of it tied back to Vincent?”_

Dean thinks of Damon’s warning when he first arrived. About both Isabella and Vincent’s disappearance. He glances over to see Sam is listening close. Putting puzzle pieces together with Dean.

“It’s too early to say, and like you pointed out I really couldn’t if I wanted to. What I’m calling about is a little different. I’m looking to talk to the sheriff’s daughter Chelsea, but she’s not at home. Where would a teenage girl go to hang out and avoid adults?”

He can hear rustling on the other end, Damon’s hand covering the receiver so he can mumble something Dean can’t decipher to someone else before he’s back.

_“Sorry ‘bout that. Telling Erin she’s not going to volunteer today. I don’t want her out if there’s some killer on the loose you know?”_

Dean can sympathize, but what he wanted for Sam never really mattered much in the grand scheme of things.

“Yeah. I know. I promise she’ll be safe. Just give us a clue so we can make sure of it.”

_“If you head out north on 2620 and then make a left on 0530 you’ll see a farm, has a bunch of aluminum barns and a shitty little house. That belongs to Thomas Braden who’s a friend of hers. It’s not a working farm because his dad’s driving a truck now and his mom took off. They’re always out there where there’s no supervision.”_

“Thanks Damon, you’ve been a huge help. Keep Erin inside and keep an eye on her ok?”

 _“I’ll be damn sure of it.”_ Damon’s voice is grim when he hangs up.

“Dean. Erin, the housekeeping girl, are you thinking that she was in her parent’s accident?”

“Yeah. I am.”

He thinks of her hand. How easily she works around it. How used to it she is. Does she think the two things are mutually exclusive? Does she remember the accident ten years ago that took her parents and parts of her fingers, but not remember that a little boy she knew disappeared that day too?

“Are you thinking it was related to Vincent’s disappearance, or that it caused it?”

Dean cuts his eyes over to Sam, takes in the calculating look on Sam’s face. This is one of the things he loves the most about his little brother’s big crazy brain.

“Related to. I think they were friends.”

Sam nods once and then looks back out the front window.

“But if these kids had something to do with it. If these kids are the cause of the disappearance, or the death, will they remember?”

Dean shakes his head.

“It’s death Sammy. Ten years gone? It’s death.”

Sam looks out the windshield, eyes far away and unsure.

“I don’t think so. If it was death why erase everyone’s memories? He’s gone Dean, but he’s not _gone_.”

Dean doesn’t know what that means exactly, but he presses on the gas and hurtles towards the farm as the sun sets. A ghost couldn’t manipulate the memories of a whole town. Sam is right, something else is happening here.

 

 

The lights are on in the barn, and several cars are parked outside of it including a local police car. Dean gets out and Sam follows close behind.

The door is ajar, and he can hear arguing inside. When they step through the four people freeze. Brandon, who was apparently the oldest of the bunch ten years ago, has a hand on the butt of his service revolver. The two Dean doesn’t recognize stare at him with confusion and maybe a bit of alarm. Chelsea looks like the cat who ate the cream.

“This is trespassing agents.”

Sam steps ahead of Dean, a move Sam knows Dean _does not_ care for, and nods at Brandon.

“I wouldn’t suggest pulling that. Killing a federal agent is a pretty big crime for you.”

Brandon’s nervous, forehead glistening with sweat despite the chill of the barn. Chelsea speaks for him.

“That’s if we get caught, which we won’t. Daddy was already setting it up.”

Dean steps in then.

“He may have taken us off the reports but he called my boss and had a nice little chat. The Bureau knows we’re here.”

Brandon’s hand slips off the revolver, and Chelsea gives him a look of disgust so cutting Brandon’s head drops in shame.

“What do you want Agent?”

Sam speaks before Dean has a chance.

“What really happened to Vincent Holley? We know he didn’t disappear in thin air. What did the group of you do?”

The redhead in the back, aged from the last picture Dean saw but still the only redhead in the group, shuffles his feet and looks to Chelsea.

“Chels, we gotta tell them. It was an accident. We weren’t supposed to be near the well. Maybe they can-”

“Shut the fuck up!” She roars it and birds are startled from the rafters above them.

Dean watches as a feather falls slowly from the rafters above. His eyes catch on it, flipping and somersaulting down in slow motion, before it settles on Chelsea’s fine, blonde hair.

“You took him out to a well. To scare him. To bully him.”

These kids have no way of knowing how dangerous the tone Sam has right now is. If they did they would start running.

“Yeah. So? Little queer thought he could strut it around and no one would do anything about it. And they didn’t for a while. Sure, Preacher Robert talked about it at the pulpit but the adults weren’t _doing_ shit about it. So we took care of it.”

She’s smug. That’s the part that sets Dean’s blood on fire the most. And the more sure and confident she is that they did the right thing the more the others stand tall. She’s a natural born leader, and Dean has been around long enough to know that’s rarely good.

Sam’s voice is thick when it comes out. Cold. Dean almost shies away from it.

“And they think it was an accident but you know better don’t you Chelsea? You meant for it to happen. You meant for him to fall. And you were just so proud of finally wiping him out.”

Chelsea’s face goes dark, angry, and Dean watches the feather tremble there as she coughs. It’s a weird detail to focus on, but he can’t help it. Something is happening here. Something is building. He looks around the barn, but there’s no obvious signs. The lights are staying steady, there’s no sudden drop in temperature or shadowy shape.

“Yeah. I was proud. But the little faggot lived.”

Suddenly, the others are coughing too. Matthew, the only one that hasn’t spoken, bends over and grips his knees as the coughs wrack his body. The fits are much stronger in them than they are in Chelsea, but her face is getting more purple than red as she wheezes out the next words.

“So fuck-”

And then she can’t speak anymore. Her face contorts and twists, hatred and anger becoming fear, and she holds out a hand to Dean and Sam as the other claws at her own throat. The boys behind her have hit the ground, thrashing and struggling, limbs flailing and fingers digging in the dirt, but Dean is still focused on Chelsea. The feather breaks free from her hair and falls, slow still, end over end, until it touches down on the dirt.

Chelsea’s face lands behind it, the last little bit of air pushing out of her lungs sending it skittering forward a few inches.

Where it becomes a lined sheet of composition notebook paper.

“The well Dean.”

His brother isn’t even hesitating. It’s a huge sign of the changes in Sam over the years that he seems to feel no compassion or remorse for the four dead young people on the ground in front of them. Sammy used to be the bleeding heart.

But Dean isn’t one to judge. He doesn’t feel anything for them either.

They turn together, Sam grabbing the paper almost as an afterthought as they rush out the barn door and start their search. The sun has set, and all that’s left is the light of dusk creeping over the horizon as the stars begin to overtake the sky. Sam’s flashlight moves in precise patterns, and Dean’s tries to pick up the spots he’s missing, to work in tandem with him. He’s so focused he misses it until he’s literally falling over it and hitting the ground, knocking the wind out of himself. Dean rolls off the wood and calls out to Sam, and his brother is there in seconds checking him over.

Dean points his light to what he tripped over and there it is. A reasonably new wooden well cover, perhaps exactly ten years old, nestled over the stone of an old well.

Sam grabs one side of it and lifts, muscles bulging under the suit jacket, and Dean slides forward on his stomach and hangs the flashlight over the side. The well is old, done probably by Thomas’s grand or great grandpa. As such it’s only about thirty feet down and Dean’s beam hits the bottom where there’s scummy looking water and nothing else. A breath punches out of him.

He doesn’t know what he expected to see. A skeletal teenager clinging to the walls, looking up at him with pleading eyes? A floating pile of bones? Whatever it is the anti-climax hits him hard and he almost drops the flashlight in the wake of his disappointment.

Above him Sam stands, perfectly calm and motionless, and when Dean looks up his brother’s face is on the edge of discovery. A look Dean knows from Sam all too well.

“What are you thinking Sammy?”

His brother points back to town.

“Let’s go back to the motel.”

“There may be remains under that water Sam. If this is a ghost we need to get them and salt and burn them. The books and the journals probably need to go too.”

Sam shakes his head and then bends down and pulls Dean up onto his feet.

“There’s no body in that well. Come on. Let’s go back to the motel.”

Dean drives while Sam holds the flashlight to read the story aloud.

“ _The Snakes. Ruling the land in the Queen’s sickness were a group of snakes. All were very devious and poisonous, but the most powerful of them was the leader. Her fangs dripped with purple venom, and her scales were the prettiest of all. She would hypnotize others with them, sliding up until she was close enough to bite and infect them with her poison. The snakes hated the Robin, and they went to all lengths to destroy him. Their hunt was done better in the dark, and they believed that he brought the light. What they forgot was that as snakes they needed the warmth of summer and spring, and the Robin brought that too. What they hated was also what sustained them. They plotted and schemed, they slid up to the Robin over and over scaring him, swiping at him with their fangs, but they were never able to catch him. In a fit of anger one day the leader bit her followers, poisoning them, but forgetting that by doing so she herself was drinking their poison. They died together, choking on their hatred_.”

He presses down on the gas pedal and hopes that Sam doesn’t see him wiping his eyes.

 

 

The motel is quiet, the whole town is really, and Dean pulls up to the front office and hops out following Sam’s fast pace.

When Sam steps through the door Damon looks up in surprise, eyes widening at what Dean is pretty sure is his first good look at Sam upright. And considering the look on Sam’s face it’s not the most welcome sight.

“You’re Damon right? Damon Elkhart?”

Damon nods, putting down his magazine and shooting a look to Dean. Dean doesn’t want to interrupt Sam’s train of thought so he just tries to look reassuring.

“Yeah. I’m Damon. How can I help you Agent?”

Sam steps fully up to the counter, looming over Damon.

“What were your parents doing the night they died?”

Damon’s face loses all color, and Dean sees the grief overtake him. Whatever it is that Sam was going for that seems to relax him a little. Sam is less in a fight stance now. Dean wonders what emotion would have caused Sam to strike.

“They were going out with Erin. She was worried about a friend of hers.”

“What friend?”

Damon’s face screws up a little, tears leaking out of his eyes silently. He wipes them and then swallows.

“I honestly don’t remember, and I don’t know why. I remember she was in a panic. She got them both in the car and then they left. I didn’t go with because I had a test the next day. It was a hit and run the sheriff said. Somebody was speeding down 0530 and slammed into them. Mom was killed instantly. Dad died waiting for the EMS. Erin’s arm went through the glass and that’s how she got hurt that way.”

He’s wiping more now, voice thick with grief and pain. Sam leans in, and all the tension is gone from him. His voice is soothing and soft. His hand lands on Damon’s shoulder and gives comfort Dean bets Damon didn’t think he was capable of.

“Did the sheriff ever catch who did it?”

“Nah man. He said it must have been a truck driver or some out of town person. But Brandon’s parents were buying themselves a new car a week later and everybody knew the sheriff’s kid and those other little assholes were involved. Just nothing we could do about it. I wanted to pick Erin up and move, I was old enough to be emancipated and take care of her, but all the family money was tied up in this place.”

It easily explains how the sheriff was so ready to take them out. He’d already covered up his daughter’s first murders, he’d probably been preparing for years in case someone came sniffing around. Even if the fucked up timeline in his head didn’t know how many.

“When did Erin start volunteering at the hospital?”

Damon’s face gets dreamy, thoughtful, and he looks up at Sam and purses his lips before answering.

“Soon as she was old enough. Before then, after the accident, she just hung out there and watched what was happening. Learning the trade.”

Sam speaks to Dean without breaking eye contact with Damon.

“Go look for Erin.”

Dean ducks around Damon, moving on instinct until he finds the living quarters attached to the back of the front desk. There’s no one there, but the heat is fighting hard against the cold air the cracked window is letting in.

He goes back to the front to see Sam handing Damon a tissue box. His brother’s face is knowing. Calm.

“Sammy. She took off.”

“I know where she went.”

 

 

The hospital is silent. The nurse up front is asleep, and Dean and Sam walk past her quietly and quickly. Now that they’re here Dean knows exactly where they’re going. He follows Sam down the corridor to the flickering light, and then Sam pushes the door open and steps inside. Dean follows.

Erin is sitting in a chair beside a hospital bed. Her eyes are red and wet, and her hands clutch one bony set of fingers attached to an equally skeletal arm. Dean follows it all the way up to a face. It’s older, elongated and bearing a hint of hair growth, but it’s Vincent Holley. There’s an oxygen tube in his throat connected to a machine that pumps his lungs, a feeding tube, and a myriad of other wires that dwarf his frail body.

She looks over to them, her eyes wide and wet, and then she swallows and stands up.

“I knew it. I knew you two would figure it out.”

Sam steps deeper into the room. Dean almost tells her that Sam figured it out, and Dean is just now realizing he’s playing catch up.

“You did a spell. To make his stories come true. To summon us.”

Erin nods, tears pouring down her face.

“And to make you save him. To make you save my friend. I knew you could do it. Vincent told me all about you guys. He had me read all the books. He told me that you were the greatest heroes ever, and that one day you two would come and Sam would beat all the bullies up and save him.”

Dean looks to see how Sam is taking this. His brother’s eyes are wet, but sure. Dean isn’t sure about what though.

“You’ve been taking care of him all this time. Stuck here with him, no one else to talk to about it, no one else to understand how trapped and alone you two are.”

She nods her head and sobs, one hand releasing Vincent to cover her eyes.

“He’s my best friend. He’s my best friend and those monsters took him away. But I know he’s in there. I know he can hear me talking to him. And I’ve been telling him all about how you guys have come. How all his stories have come to life, and how everyone that hurt him and my parents have been brought to justice. And now we’re at the end of the story. Now you save him Sam.”

Sam nods and steps forward. He takes Erin into his arms and hugs her, dwarfing her tiny frame with his, then he pulls back and wipes her eyes.

“Go stand by Dean. I know exactly what to do.”

And that’s when Dean knows. That’s when Dean knows exactly what Sam is planning, although he’s not sure why. He’ll have to ask later. Sam’s look tells Dean to restrain Erin, and so he hugs her close and keeps her there.

She’s brought them by magical means, but she’s forgotten that they themselves are not inherently magical.

They’re just men.

Sam sits beside Vincent. Takes his hand gently and carefully. Then he leans in and whispers in the boy’s ear.

It’s not instant, Dean knows from experience that it never really is, but the heart monitor starts to beep, starts to falter, and then the alarms start.

Dean holds Erin close as she fights. As she screams. He steps back and presses his back to the door but no one comes. Maybe the spell that prevented them from remembering the patient in this room keeps them from hearing the warnings as well. Whatever it is Sam holds Vincent’s hands until the line is completely flat, and the boy is fully dead.

Erin summoned two heroes, and what she got were Vincent’s reapers.


	4. Epilogue

Since the day he opened his laptop and stared blankly at the screen, even though Sam didn’t know it, Vincent has been talking to him. Quietly, desperately, and Sam has been trying to listen.

But there was too much distance between them. Too much that Sam couldn’t hear. Unconsciously he’d followed the trail of breadcrumbs that Vincent had left him until he finally reached this point. Until he finally reached Vincent himself in his bed in the hospital. Locked away from the world.

In reality, Vincent was still in the well.

The closer he got to Vincent the louder he was. And Sam had kept pushing. Kept looking and searching while Vincent stayed right behind him whispering. Pleading.

The moment he steps into Vincent’s room Sam knows, _just knows_ , everything that came before and exactly what it was that Vincent was asking him.

He knows and he knows that he has to help.

_He can see it clear as day. Vincent’s life. How hard it was to go to school after even the teachers and administrators started singling him out and punishing him. How very few smiling faces he encountered in a day and how sad and lonely he was until Erin came over and wrapped him in a hug. Until Erin became his best friend in the whole world. His only friend. Two extraordinary and gifted children in a place that punished them for both qualities._

_And so Sam watches Vincent go to the burned out house. He watches Vincent take out his notebooks. There are two at all times, one that holds the personal stories, the cathartic ones that deal with the darker aspects of his life, and the ones that hold his Sam and Dean stories. The ones that have his hope._

_The day it happens Vincent is writing furiously in his Sam and Dean notebook, relaxed in his little room and scribbling away. In his story Sam and Dean have come to Isabella because the little shell of a house is haunted, and since Vincent knows the most about it they’ve turned to him._

_Over the course of the story the relationship between Sam and Vincent changes. Grows. And then Sam tells Vincent that he wants to be his father. He wants to adopt Vincent, take him away. And he does. His mother is relieved, she loves him but the strain of raising him is too much for her illness. The people of the town are terrified of Sam and Dean. They won’t let anyone near their new kid._

_And Erin? She’s sad to lose her friend, but Sam and Dean promise that they’ll visit. That Erin and Vincent can talk online and on the phone._

_He’s going to learn to be a hunter. To learn to be one of the Winchesters. He’s so excited._

_Sam’s not sure if the viewpoint he’s at is what Vincent has been given as he stays on the border of life and death or a compilation Vincent built knowing what he knows, but Sam can see Chelsea and the others sneaking up on Vincent. Seeing that his headphones are on and he’s listening to music loudly. And that’s when Chelsea hits Vincent in the head._

_The boy lists, flounders, dropping the notebook and trying to scramble up but he’s off-balance and confused. Brandon grabs Vincent and pins his hands while Matthew punches him in the stomach. Thomas looks around nervously, but Chelsea is laughing. Egging them on._

_And then they’re dragging Vincent up out of the room and the house. Marching him across the woods until they reach the edge of the farm and the well._

_“Hang him over.” Chelsea is grinning broadly, brightly, excited for this._

_Brandon hesitates. Thomas does not. He grabs Vincent’s hoodie and pulls him into position before dangling him over the lip of the well. Sam watches Vincent flailing, grabbing at Brandon’s arm in fear._

_And then Chelsea steps up and looks Vincent in the eye. She’s smiling maniacally. She’s pumped up. She tickles Brandon once along his side and his hand opens._

_Vincent falls, head striking the stone and then it is black and he is in the well._

_There’s noise, the kids yelling at each other, fighting about something, but Vincent can’t make it out enough for Sam to make it out either. Tires screeching, gravel flying, and then the sound of metal screaming somewhere far far away like an angry flock of birds descending on prey._

_But Vincent can do nothing. He’s in the well. It’s cold and dark and he’s alone, and no matter how he cries out no one hears him._

_Sam crouches down beside the boy and pulls him into a hug. Holds him close and tight and rubs his back and Vincent cries in despair and pain. It’s too much for a child to hold up under. It’s too much for anyone to hold up under._

_And then Erin is in the well with him. She talks, constantly, but when Vincent responds she can’t hear. She keeps telling him things. Anything she can think of it seems._

_She tells Vincent that when he didn’t arrive at her house and he was supposed to she just knew that he was in trouble. That she and her parents were going to the house when they got hit. She tells him that they died, that they’re gone, and it’s just her and Damon now. She doesn’t tell him she lost her fingers, but he can feel the ghost of her mutilated hand when she touches him. The distant warmth of her tears when she cries on him._

_Erin’s voice stays with him. Sometimes she’s gone, and when that happens Sam pulls close and holds Vincent again._

_He stays, for ten years Sam stays in the well with Vincent and listens to Erin grow ever more bitter and hateful towards the people that destroyed their lives._

_Then she tells him that she’s found a way. A way to bring the real Sam and Dean. A way to make all of Vincent’s dreams come true. She couldn’t help her parents, that ship has long sailed. She couldn’t get justice for Vincent, but by God now Vincent can do it._

_Now Vincent can be the one that puts terror in their hearts. All of them._

_And then Vincent is both in and out of the well. He’s with Sam. He sees the first motel, the car ride to Isabella, and the resulting investigation. The stories take him along so that he’s sweeping his relieved mother away into the darkness, killing the preacher that riled up the town’s hatred and bile. The pages drag him away from Sam at the sheriff’s office, where he cannot stop himself from enacting his childhood vengeance even though he no longer has the taste for it that he once did._

_Vincent cries for help, for himself and Erin, but only the present Sam can hear him clearly. Sam holds Vincent close and tells him that this isn’t his fault. That he can’t be held accountable for what’s happening now._

_Sam watches himself enter the room, the moment of clarity, and then he is back in the present. Inside the well with Vincent and outside of it with a trusting Erin and a confused Dean._

And Sam can see Vincent, clear as day, curled up inside of his much bigger body and looking to Sam for help. Sam sits down beside him and leans in to whisper.

“Vincent. I’m here. It’s ok. I’ve always been here.”

The boy nods, eyes huge and full of tears, and he links his ghostly fingers with Sam even as Sam takes his unresponsive hand in the living world.

“ _I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to abandon her_.”

Sam smiles, softly, and squeezes both hands gently.

“It’s ok Vincent. It’s ok. You know I wouldn’t lie to you right? That I’m here to do what’s needed to help you both. To save you both.”

He nods, eyes huge and trusting, wet, and Sam distantly hears Erin screaming. He knows why. It’s coming to an end now.

“ _I know. What do I do?_ ”

Sam leans forward in the afterlife, presses his lips to the boy’s head gently.

“Let go. It’s ok to let go now. You did what you were supposed to, and everybody is going to be safe now.”

Vincent throws his arms around Sam as the living version of the boy’s heart stutters and stops.

“ _I love you Sam. You’re my hero_.”

Sam feels the tears on both sides, and he pushes them back and hugs Vincent close.

“I love you too.”

And then both Vincents are gone, and Sam is left in the living world with a screaming Erin and a Dean that is obviously trying his best to keep the girl up and together.

Sam gets up in what feels like slow motion, slightly unsteady now being in just one place after so long. He crosses the floor and takes Erin from Dean.

“It’s ok. It’s ok now. That’s what he wanted.”

Erin’s head starts shaking, and she beats weakly at Sam’s chest.

“No. No he wouldn’t leave me! He’s my friend and he loves me!”

Sam closes his eyes and loses the fight with tears.

“He does. He loves you more than life, but he wanted to go. He didn’t want the violence or the pain anymore. And he was too far on the other side to come back Erin. Just too far.”

She stops hitting. Covers her face and sobs as her body goes limp in Sam’s arms. He picks her up easily and carries her out of the hospital, past the staff members who are still sleeping under the influence of the spell.

Past the sleeping town.

He can hear Dean’s feet hitting the ground behind him, perfectly in step, and eventually they reach the motel and Sam waits for Dean to open the door before he goes to Damon and puts his sister in his arms.

The man is blinking, face pale and confused, and Erin clings to her only family tightly. Sam can’t stay here anymore. He’s done his duty, and he knows that she won’t forgive him for that for a long time.

She’s an adult in many ways, grown in a way that her friend could not, but Vincent was so much older at the end.

Dean helps him pack everything up, and they drive out of Okeene, far away from Isabella, without a word spoken between them until they reach the border of Oklahoma. Then Dean pulls over and rubs his face.

“You ok Sammy?”

Sam nods, and then feels his face crumple as his control breaks.

 _You’re my hero_.

Dean’s arms wrap around him and Sam falls into the hug. Let’s his brother hold him close and comfort him wordlessly. Soaks in the sounds his brother is making to try to soothe him.

Eventually Sam will be able to speak. Eventually he’ll be able to tell Dean everything that happened to him. That happened to Vincent and Erin and the two tiny towns. But this is not that moment. Sam did what he had to do. Sam was Vincent’s hero.

And Sam will never be able to forget the cost of that. Even if it brought him back to Dean. Even if it feels like it took some of the darkness that’s stayed with him so long.

Sam will never forget the cost of finishing Vincent’s story.

 

_Ethan: I wrote about you, but I don’t know if I created you._  
_Prosper: You made me real._  
_Ethan: I can’t go yet. I have to finish my story about you. I wrote stories about everyone._  
_Prospero: I know you did. But my story’s done. And it’s a fine story._  
_Ethan: I can let go?_  
_Prospero: You can let go._  
_Ethan: What happens then?_  
_Prospero: Another story kid. What else?_

_-The Vanishing of Ethan Carter_


End file.
